


The Nightingale and Not the Lark

by Stranger



Series: Caged Flight [2]
Category: Eroica Yori Ai o Komete | From Eroica with Love
Genre: Brief but intense firefight, Character in danger of death, Cold War Era, M/M, bomb threats, complicated relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-20
Updated: 2021-03-20
Packaged: 2021-03-27 00:41:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 25,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30114525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stranger/pseuds/Stranger
Summary: Klaus is assigned as security to a NATO conference in Brussels.  Eroica mucks things up, as usual.  Then, worse happens.
Relationships: Dorian/OC Michael, Klaus von dem Eberbach/Dorian Red Gloria
Series: Caged Flight [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2206134
Kudos: 2





	The Nightingale and Not the Lark

**Author's Note:**

> Written early 1990s. Cold War era political geography and international relations. 1980s attitudes toward gays and gender. 1970s attitudes toward smoking tobacco. Casual attitude toward smoking cannabis.  
> My thanks to a friend who supplied the French conversation bits. Any errors in usage are my own.

Klaus tried not to yawn, and succeeded in keeping his mouth closed. Baby-sitting grown men was not his favorite job, and the Chief knew it. Yet, here he was.

_"…C’est un plaisir de vous revoir…"_

_"…et l’ambassadeur d’ltalie me dit…"_

_"…qui est-ce, là; bas? Ah oui, c’est un ami du ministre anglais, oui, le blond, c’est bien lui."_

_"…n’oubliez pas que le général DeGaulle n’était jamais…"_

Major Eberbach supposed NATO did have to hold these ministerial-level meetings, and it would hardly do to let the delegates go unguarded. But did it have to be him here, listening to these meaningless pleasantries?

_"…Ah, non, non, je ne suis que l’assistant de sous-secrétaire. Je lui apporte le thè…"_

The roomful of assorted diplomats, officials and hangers-on (and four nations’ security teams) babbled away, mostly in French. This was, after all, Brussels. Not quite as French as Paris, but annoying.

The voices crested and ebbed, leaving one commenter against silence: _"…c’est une belle, mais frigide, je vous assure…"_ before the tide of noise rose again to cover it and its laughing reply.

He turned to sweep the far side of the room, where Mr. C and a couple of self-conscious Spanish guards were stationed. C and the Spaniards were there. And so was — he froze for an instant in shock.

Then he was moving again, ignoring the flamboyant head of blond curls on a man who was beautiful and the opposite of cold, as anyone in the room could plainly see. Dorian, Earl of Gloria, was nothing if not a warmly social creature.

He was here. Mingling with the delegates to a top-level NATO conference. In French.

The ever-startling aquamarine eyes lifted from a Belgian attaché for just long enough to brush over Klaus. Then, as if in natural progression, Dorian gestured at a waiter who hurried over, tray at the ready.

_"Mais cette longue conversation m’a donné soif. Ou est-ce l’effect de votre charmante compagnie?"_

The flirtatious compliment carried the Earl of Gloria back into the Belgian’s orbit, and Klaus returned his attention to his surroundings, thinking furiously. Dorian, here! What was Dorian doing here?

Other than the obvious?

Klaus was sure he could guess one reason Dorian was here. What bothered him was that he might not know all of the reasons. It would be a grave mistake to underestimate the Earl’s capacity for causing trouble.

A conversation from halfway across the room floated into his unwilling ear: _"…pas frigide… pas frigide du tout!"_

He swiveled to put it behind him. The larger part of the room and the doors to the kitchens and outer rooms were more important targets for surveillance than one Englishman.

Why was Dorian using his seductive wiles here? And on whom? Klaus could not, quite, ignore the question, however much he tried.

He ascertained again that the German party and the Norwegian and Danish envoys were chatting away in perfect safety, and he brooded.

* * * * *

Two hours later, after the ministers had been packed off to their rooms or escorted to whatever late-night excitement they could find in Brussels, the Major stubbed out a cigarette when he heard a knock on his hotel room door.

Unsurprised, Klaus answered it, and, unsurprised, saw Dorian waiting there, still in the evening’s formal clothing. The shining black emphasized his golden beauty at least as much as the exotic costumes he often preferred. Klaus said nothing and opened the door in invitation.

Dorian came in, closed the door and leaned back against it, smiling wide-eyed at Klaus as though he hadn’t seen him in weeks — which was true. They had met last… Klaus’s mind shied away from thinking about what had occurred at that and other recent meetings… They had met and… They had met for personal reasons three times since the summer mission to Hungary that had made discretion necessary, the last time just before All Saints’ Day.

Five weeks ago. It had seemed like a long time to Klaus. He stared back at Dorian, at the brilliant eyes, the streaming curls, the slender body which could be so unexpectedly strong. There didn’t seem to be any need for conversation.

Dorian didn’t move toward him or speak, and after a long moment, Klaus gathered enough wit to realize why. Before the silence could grow awkward, he said, "How unexpected, Dorian. What brings you to Brussels?" The words sounded abrupt in his ears, but he stepped forward as Dorian did to share a full embrace. Dorian’s eager hands stroked through Klaus’s hair and his eyes stayed fixed on Klaus’s face until, a moment later, his mouth fastened on Klaus’s. Only the two of them knew how much Klaus contributed to the kiss.

When their lips parted, Dorian opened his eyes slowly and smiled, then raised his eyebrows. Klaus let himself enjoy the silence a moment longer, before he said, "It’s quite all right. I’ve made sure the room is clean. This past hour."

Dorian became instantly animated. "I’m terribly sorry that I wasn’t here sooner. The reception dragged on and on, and then Perry wanted to discuss something for a bit before I could get away." He twined an arm around Klaus’s waist and tried for another kiss. "Am I very late?"

Klaus didn’t let him change the subject. "Perry?"

"Holman. One of the Foreign Office young lions. I’ve met him around lately, and when he asked if I’d come along and help out at this conference, I thought it might be a lark."

"Help out?" Dorian’s aid to any official diplomatic mission of any degree seemed questionable to Klaus. "Just how well does ‘Perry’ know you?"

"Not nearly well enough," said Dorian blithely. "He had in mind," his eyes met Klaus’s easily, "that my French is rather good, and somewhere he’s got the idea that I can talk people round. And what else is diplomacy?"

"A verdamm— something I could do without," muttered Klaus. He was unsure of his next move, but Dorian’s still-close embrace was having the effect Dorian undoubtedly intended.

"So here I am, telling people what they ought to do…" The quick chatter stopped, and Dorian’s arms closed around Klaus again, both hands cupping Klaus’s head. Dorian kissed him softly with great care and said, "Let’s go to bed. Now."

Klaus froze for an instant. It was still a shock, to hear that: to want that.

"That is, if you want to tonight," said Dorian’s voice, slightly anxious, in his ear. Klaus recalled the same voice, unfamiliar with bright, nasal vowels, trading pleasantries with the Belgian attaché. By comparison, the whisper was far too sincere.

The worst of it was that Klaus knew he wanted to do it, and knew that Dorian knew. What he didn’t want was to talk about it. He pulled Dorian back into the faltering embrace and let blind passion direct the next few minutes. Dorian was the one to break, panting, from the kiss.

"I’m ready," he whispered, an invitation, and Klaus began undressing him to silence any further words.

Dorian’s exclamations from then on were not conversation in the sense of requiring a verbal reply. He made his desire and his pleasure known beyond question, found Klaus’s desire and answered it. Klaus rode with the give and take of pleasure, not thinking at all of anything but Dorian and the moment.

Afterward, with Dorian dozing beside him, Klaus wondered at their wordless accord in this illicit act, so unlike their discord in everything else. Klaus’s physical feelings, it seemed, were often plainer to Dorian than to himself — did the other man understand his mind with the same clarity? He hoped not.

Dorian’s body, warm and unconscious beside him in the dark, was a reminder of the constant attraction Klaus felt. Even in sleep Dorian was still a siren of desire. Why? wondered Klaus. Why this man, why me? He felt the urge for a cigarette, but it was too much trouble.

Why here and now? Why anyone?

And who was Perry Holman?

The last, he could find out. The West German security team wasn’t assigned to the British party, so Klaus knew only that "Peregrine B. Holman" was one name on the list of delegates. A quick conversation with the security head at Brussels would tell him anything he cared to ask; how and how much to ask presented only minor problems. He’d do that in the morning.

Dorian should leave before morning. This was all extremely risky, Klaus knew. Mr. A had pronounced this room (and, for good measure, all the hotel rooms of the security team) free of snooping devices, but Dorian was noticeable and devices weren’t the only ways to snoop.

Dorian knew that perfectly well. Yet, here he was in Klaus’s room, in the middle of a high-level NATO conference full of people who could recognize them both by sight.

Why?

Klaus nudged the sleeper. "Hsst."

A hand became animate and travelled slowly up his leg. With purpose. "Want more, lover? I could…"

"Later." The hand continued upward, brushing lightly, tantalizing. "Later, not now." Klaus caught Dorian’s hand with his own. "Just what are you doing in the British delegation to this conference?"

"Talking to people. In French. That’s all — I’m not going to make a career of it. They don’t pay anything," Dorian said with great good humor, "or not enough to speak of. It’s all very above-board."

Unlike certain jobs Eroica had been very well paid to do for NATO Intelligence. Klaus let that go for the moment. "And you just happened to find me here — or did you know beforehand where I would be?" If pre-conference security had been breached, there was no telling who besides Dorian knew about the arrangements.

Dorian snuggled closer and his other hand set out on an interesting foray down Klaus’s back. "I hoped I knew. I was ever so relieved when I saw you sulking away at the reception. I wasn’t sure my… um, source would give me anything but a cover story." He nuzzled under Klaus’s hair and began kissing a shoulder.

Klaus growled, wondering which of his agents could have succumbed to Eroica’s blandishments. "Who?" he demanded. "Was it G?"

"Your Chief," said Dorian sweetly, working his way down a shoulder blade.

"Don’t be ridiculous."

"Don’t ask silly questions," said Dorian. Fingertips traced a vertebra, then another. "You know I’d tell you anything you really ought to know. My source is impeccable."

"To whom?" muttered Klaus, but Dorian’s by-play was distracting enough that he was ready to drop the subject. For the present. Then it occurred to him that Dorian was trying a little too hard to distract him from questions that Dorian had answered too readily. Suspicion reawakened, he said, "Eroica. This wouldn’t have anything to do with the new museum they’ve just opened on the Königsplatz, would it?"

"Königsplein," said Dorian, absently. "How do you know about the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts?" His voice was full of interested surprise, but his delivery was a little artificial, Klaus thought.

"The Danish delegate wanted to see it. C and D escorted him, and Mr. C was kind enough to point out how much _you_ would like it."

"Did he now?" Dorian tried a yawn, then snuggled back to the task of playing hands and lips over Klaus’s back. "He should know better than that. I can’t abide so much modern art. Not all in one place. Too much of it isn’t even trying to be beautiful."

"My men recall your attitude toward all art very well, Eroica. Remember that."

"I’ll be careful," promised Dorian, hands working delicately down Klaus’s spine.

"I want your word that you aren’t planning to steal anything in Brussels."

"I am not planning to steal anything from the Musée d’Art Moderne. That’s the new building. Interesting architecture, by the way. Not bad."

"Or anything else?"

"Or anything else," said Dorian peaceably, pinching a tender spot. "Although there’s something right here that I like enough to visit again and again." He continued demonstrating the point, hands and mouth skimming further downward, urging Klaus to turn, to accept the distraction of pleasure, the gift of sensation that could, for long moments, erase all other considerations from Klaus’s busy mind.

He never quite understood how lovemaking began. Dorian had been touching him, caressing him, for many minutes already — was it distraction or intimacy, and what made the difference? Pressed warmly into the curve of Dorian’s body, Klaus felt the stroking hands on his flanks and stomach that brought a new rush of sensation and hardness to his groin. Klaus felt himself held not only by Dorian’s moving hands but also by the enveloping body behind him, by the chin digging into his shoulder, the leg that rose over his and nestled its foot between his knees. Dorian and Dorian’s body was the only reality at moments like this, the only thing he was aware of aside from the pleasure that seized him, which was conjured from nothing Klaus understood.

He could not stop it. He could not make himself want to pull the touching hands away; and not wanting, he could not do it. He would not utter a word of protest against the irresistible, uncontrolled pleasure Dorian’s hand promised, when it closed tightly around his erection. A breathless giggle sounded from behind Klaus’s shoulder. "Beautiful, lover. Fast, and beautiful."

Klaus had to respond somehow. Dorian was stroking him, hard and slowly, in a way that had infinitely more effect now than it ever had when Klaus had done it himself in private guilt. Klaus fell back onto Dorian and groped down his arm to the hand that was arousing him to that still-unfamiliar and frightening pitch of pleasure. Dorian’s hand continued to move under his, shaping the storm in Klaus’s groin; the sensation of living motion between what Klaus touched and what his body felt confused him for a moment, but then the discontinuity excited him.

Swept deeper into desire, he heard his breath catch in his throat, felt Dorian’s breath ruffling his hair. He felt his own hand convulsively echoing the motion of Dorian’s, felt it as unnecessary and out of place and tried to open it. Instead of lessening, all sensation doubled; warm pressure folded around his balls; a lighter, more tantalizing grip enclosed his shaft. "Yes, do it," breathed Dorian, though Klaus barely heard the words. He touched pleasure, and felt pleasure, and took fierce, moaning joy from his own fingers while pleasure mounted as well from deep under Dorian’s hand. Klaus’s body shuddered desire and release against the support of his lover.

"Oh, my," he heard Dorian say at last, as they relaxed from the posture of ecstatic tension. "I think I like it. I think you liked it."

Klaus could not answer for several minutes; he could only let Dorian lie against him, now and then hearing a murmur, feeling a brush of hair or lips. Liking hadn’t seemed to enter into it. It had simply been impossible not to be part of the rising need and the intense satisfaction of desire. When Klaus had recovered enough to realize that it was his own desire and satisfaction that he’d felt, nothing else, he said, "Did you? Like it?"

"Of course," said Dorian, "if you did." He giggled breathlessly again, pressing himself full-length against Klaus.

"And you want…"

"Of course." Dorian kissed the wrist and hand of Klaus’s that he held, mouthing at the flesh obviously for his own pleasure. "What do you think I am?"

Klaus did not know what he should reply to that in words, but Dorian made no complaint about the answer he did give.

Sometime in the depth of the night, Klaus woke and was momentarily disoriented at being naked and warmed by another body in the bed. Then he remembered: desire gone wild, uncontrolled pleasure, Dorian. Here, at the conference. His relaxed awareness tightened in defense. Dorian had once been a threat, but the worst had happened, and happened again, in his private relationship with Dorian. It could not threaten him further. The world outside that watched them was what Major Eberbach could not now afford to ignore.

The realization that he’d been totally absorbed in this separate world of Dorian and sensation shocked Klaus now, as it did whenever he noticed it. What he did here was improper. The compromises he made with his conscience in order to sleep with Dorian appalled him, and the threat of discovery was constant. Klaus intended to go on with it. He didn’t care, when he slept beside Dorian or was brought to passionate climax in his arms, that even finding the occasions for them to be together was dangerous. He knew the risks could be avoided — by avoiding Dorian — and he knew that he would continue to take them nevertheless. The sheer irrationality of it shocked him.

Dorian slept, near enough to touch, his only motion a slow untroubled breathing. The closeness Dorian sought in sleep reassured Klaus. He still could not quite trust the Englishman’s outrageous public personas, but Dorian’s actions asleep could not be a trick or pretense. Klaus’s desire to be near Dorian in sleep surprised him also; it superseded the knowledge that they could be discovered, embarrassed, Klaus’s career ruined. Those fears were familiar now, and less important for the moment than being here with Dorian. It was the choice he’d made. Klaus moved carefully against the warm, breathing body and fell again into dark slumber.

Klaus woke again and knew that it was early morning. The digital figures on his travel clock confirmed it: 6.30. A dark hour, in December, but late enough to think of caution. "Dorian."

He could feel the body beside him react, and took a small, unexpected pleasure from that fact. Dorian said, "Uhhng?"

"It’s morning. You must go back to your own room before everyone else wakes up."

"What time is it?"

"Six thirty-one. My men go on duty at eight."

"What do you mean, back?"

"Don’t be an idiot. Anyone who sees you here will remember you."

"Ah," said Dorian, in tones of sleepy enlightenment. "Except all the others who are creeping discreetly out of rooms they’re not supposed to be in either."

"Not in my team," said Klaus firmly.

"Oh? Do they never have sex in hotels?"

Klaus cursed the ambiguity of the spoken word. "Their companions during their off hours are their own business," he said stiffly. "They will, however, remember anything they see. Especially you. In any case, your party will surely notice if you arrive for breakfast in evening dress."

"Perry won’t be any trouble. He knows me."

That woke a troublesome thought in Klaus’s mind. "How well?" How much would Dorian tell Holman? No, that was unfair. "How much could Holman guess?"

"I knew him at school. Not very well, really, but he remembered me. He won’t be difficult, I promise."

It still sounded odd to Klaus. "Why did you come to this boring conference, if you weren’t sure I would be here? There must be something more."

"Diplomacy," said Dorian, "makes the world go round. Not everyone minds talk and more talk the way you do. I thought it would be a good chance to see some world-class talkers in action."

"Idiots," said Klaus, but not with real force. The slow process of international compromise and agreement annoyed him, but he knew it was infinitely better than the alternative. What he truly didn’t understand was Dorian’s role; and he did understand that if Dorian had the diplomatic protection of his government, the opportunity to heist some priceless Belgian keepsake in relative safety might be impossible for him to resist.

"You’d prefer something more dramatic, I’m sure," said Dorian.

"No, I don’t. And certainly not this morning."

Dorian grinned understanding. "I’ll leave you to your duty for the morning. And I promise to get to my room without being seen even by your eagle-eyed band of subordinates. But, I’ll come back, when the conference permits. This is too good a chance to waste." He gave Klaus a chaste morning kiss and got out of the bed.

* * * * *

"The Earl of Gloria was added at the last minute, yes," said the Belgian security-team head, a sharp-eyed man in his 50s with a reputation as a remarkably astute observer. "Mr. Holman is on the fast track at the British Foreign Office, and if he thinks someone will help out at the meetings, his Foreign Secretary considers the candidate."

"I see," said Major Eberbach. "Was there any other irregularity in his appointment?"

"Not to speak of," said Colonel Desti. "I had the story from a person in their Special Branch; he had no reluctance about telling the tale, which means only that there is nothing to conceal in it. The Earl came up to ‘town’, as the British call London — so insular — and took his good friend Mr. Holman to lunch unexpectedly. Mr. Holman returned to his place of work and spoke to Sir William Bridges, saying that the Earl had suggested an addition to the minister’s party, and that Mr. Holman concurred. It seems that Sir William concurred as well, for it was that same afternoon that we received the revision of the personnel list, as did the Special Branch. One assumes," he gave a quick glance at the Major’s impatient frown, "that the British authorities have their reasons, which supersede the Earl’s known eccentricities."

Klaus, in his role as seeking further background on the British delegates, let his eyebrows rise. "Which are?"

Desti shrugged in Gallic fashion. "The young gentleman from Special Branch was less forthcoming in that direction. I do not myself care to speculate."

Klaus tabled it; Dorian’s reputation was long established and indeed might be a form of camouflage in itself. More important was the order of events and what it implied. It looked as if Dorian hadn’t been invited, but had wanted into the Brussels party and had taken steps to bring that about.

It couldn’t be a mere desire to visit Brussels. Even if Dorian had known with certainty who had been assigned to security for the December NATO conference, it would have been simplicity itself for him to travel to Brussels and book into another hotel. Dorian must have wanted official, or at least semi-official, standing among the delegates.

"What of Mr. Holman?" asked the Major. "Do I understand that his presence here is entirely expected?" He had heard Sir William’s credentials already.

"Very much so. He has been Sir William’s protégé for some time, I am told, and he is most well thought of. It is indeed a surprise that he is acquainted with the young Earl."

The Earl being so visibly unsuitable for the more functional aspects of government, his manner said. Klaus nodded agreement, even though the Belgian officer’s implications annoyed him; his concealed and growing fury was not for Desti but for Eroica. Well able to shelve matters he did not care to think about, Klaus returned to the topic under discussion. "Then Mr. Holman’s background is quite in order?"

"Indeed," said Desti, and went on to give a swift, and undoubtedly accurate, summary while the Major listened with one ear. The situation looked like trouble. Dorian might have — probably had — lied to him about being asked to join the British party. Dorian must want something here, something besides Klaus. Holman? Klaus didn’t like to believe it, even if Desti could.

Desti paused and started again. "Mr. Reginald Marsh has a dependable history…" while the Major’s thoughts flew on unchecked. His suspicions of last night were more likely than ever: Dorian could have set his fancy on something in one of Brussels’ famous collections of art, perhaps even something conveniently on display at this newly-opened museum.

Which would mean that Dorian had lied to him again, about not planning to steal something in Brussels.

It would be perfectly normal for Eroica. Klaus scowled into the Colonel’s description of the boring and completely conventional career of the fourth British delegate. And, for the same reasons that such immunity protected Dorian, there was no point in simply presenting his own suspicions to the Belgian police or to the museum security staff.

"Thank you," he said, as Desti wound up his recitation. "You reassure me that the delegates are all under complete security precautions."

"I hope that you did not doubt such a thing."

"Never, Colonel. I am worried only that I myself do not know enough about them to perform my mission. Please forgive my inquiries."

"But of course. Your dedication to your duties is well-known, Major." The tone was not ironic; Desti was a busy man, and conscientious.

"I shall trouble you no further. Good day, Colonel." Eberbach rose from his chair.

"Good day."

They shook hands with punctilious courtesy and the Major left the room, thinking. He could hardly spare time himself to follow Eroica, and it would be poor strategy anyway. Could Mr. D be assigned to it? Would Eroica, or his men, recognize D? Perhaps not. It was worth taking the chance.

* * * * *

The security offices in the NATO Headquarters building included a large room with miscellaneous desks, two of which had been given to the West German team for the duration of the conference. Here Klaus retired, hoping for a chance to compose his irritated mind.

As soon as he'd sat at the least-battered of the desks and focused his gaze absently on the large-scale wall map of the Low Countries, Agents C and D entered the room and made their way to the second desk. C eyed its chair but did not sit down. "Sir."

The Major lowered his eyes to his subordinate. "Yes, C?"

"All’s quiet in and around the second-floor meeting rooms, sir. A and B have no complaints."

"That’s expected," said Klaus. Security at this conference had been, thus far, a mere formality, and half the security teams idled on standby at any given time. Boring was better than besieged, under the circumstances, but they all hated the inaction.

Mr. D had scrounged a third chair from somewhere, and returned to set it down. At the Major’s nod, both agents sat. "The third floor is all in order, sir. E and F report no problems."

"Good," said Klaus. "C, you can handle the liaison work today. D, I have an assignment for you."

Mr. D looked hopeful. "Yes, sir?"

"You were on duty at the reception last night. Did you observe the British delegates?"

C’s eyebrows rose; then he dropped all expression. D said, "Yes, sir."

There was no surety they were not under surveillance themselves, here, but there was no hint that they were. The Major took a middle course.

"See whether they’ve brought any of their own assistants. If so, find out what they’re up to. As soon as possible. Report to me only."

"I understand," said D, and stood up. "Right away, sir."

He left. Mr. C shrugged. "There’s a catering cart with tea and coffee outside, sir."

Klaus shrugged in turn, unable to summon up the piercing glare that the reckless statement deserved. Guard duty would surely demoralize any decent agent. "Bring me a cup of coffee. Black," he said, and returned his eyes to the wall map. As soon as C removed himself, Klaus groped for an ashtray and lit a cigarette.

Klaus spent the rest of the boring morning being assured that the conference was undisturbed. He spent a tedious shift in the afternoon patrolling corridors, and another in a room full of closed-circuit television screens. Nothing in particular happened, but no one could assume that something would not happen. The passive waiting galled them all.

He returned to his temporary desk when the conference delegates had finished their meetings for the day and were being driven, by the German agents and others, back to their hotels for the rounds of tête-à-têtes over drinks, dinner and evening entertainment that seemed to be necessary between official meetings.

Not until Klaus was safely in his own surveillance-free car, with a returned Mr. D at the wheel, did he hear anything of the slightest interest.

"As you know, sir, the Earl spent the day at the NATO building."

"Yes, I know," snapped Klaus. "Go on."

"Eroica’s team-second, the one called Bonham, is staying at the Brussels Hilton, sir. In a party of four who checked in day before yesterday."

"I see," said Klaus. "And?"

"Mr. Bonham spent this afternoon wandering around Brussels, sampling the beer at several drinking houses. He spoke to one person, apart from the servers: at the second place he stopped, a man who was already there looked at him as though he’d been waiting for someone, and then spoke to him. They had a brief conversation that implied the man had agreed to do some service for Bonham, and Bonham gave him some money and a small package. The money was at least several thousand francs, and the package was a box like a very small pack of cigarettes.

"It seemed prudent to discover that man’s interests; he turns out to be an electrician who works as night-shift maintenance for the Brussels city power stations. I have his home address and I’m sure he’s not aware of having been followed."

"Interesting," said the Major.

"There’s a bit more."

"Go on."

"I took the liberty of asking if any of the Belgians assigned at NATO had contacts with the city police and could give me an idea of the market for stolen goods and other transactions."

"No doubt they expect you to be in a state of illegal intoxication tomorrow," said the Major. "What will this accomplish?"

"I tried to give that impression, sir." D had never, in the information of an extremely thorough background check, taken any substance less legal than overproof vodka. "First, no particular excitement has been reported about any potential or recent art thefts."

"All right. I hope you haven’t alerted them by asking." It was a fair question when Eroica was involved in anything, although Klaus felt sure that any target this time would be for Dorian’s private enjoyment. The thief was going to too much trouble to be working for anyone but himself.

"I think not, sir. Second, the underground commerce in drugs isn’t very big here; one goes to Amsterdam for that. The only item of interest is a pharmacy break-in on Saturday evening." The day that Eroica’s team had arrived in Brussels. Dorian had undoubtedly travelled with Sir William’s official group, on Sunday, arriving a few hours before the opening reception. The Major made a noncommittal sound. D continued, "It was quiet and clean. It wasn’t discovered until this morning, the pharmacy being closed all day Sunday. The only item missing from their inventory is the shop’s entire supply of a concentrated somnific."

In other words, a sleeping gas. Klaus recognized the jargon of chemical syllables from Mr. D as the same drug listed on an Interpol report on one of Eroica’s officially unsolved thefts. The museum guards there had been dosed with it, and woke unharmed when Eroica was long gone.

Klaus’s anger narrowed its focus on the absent thief. "Never mind the pharmacy report for now," he growled. "Have E keep an eye on Eroica this evening, and notify me if he goes out alone, or with his thieving team. I think you and I should interview this electrician you’ve discovered."

"Sir?"

"Politely, of course," said the Major, "but persuasively. Did your research suggest whether he is accustomed to criminal behavior?"

"His record’s clean," said D.

"All the better. He will be nervous and fearful to begin with. Do you have the names of his superiors in the city-maintenance organization here?"

"Two of them," said D.

"Adequate. Let us find him before he goes to work this evening."

* * * * *

Midnight had passed, and the Earl of Gloria had ostensibly retired after a late dinner with a recalcitrant Italian under-minister and his deputy, and then a short conference with Holman and Bridges. Klaus waited, fingering the small, square box of electrical gadgetry in his pocket. Eroica was unlikely to take a car to his destination, which must be within a kilometer-square area of Brussels’ old Upper City, quite near their hotel. The electrical maintenance man that Mr. D had found had turned out to be more than cooperative, after a little discussion.

Eroica opted, as Klaus had hoped, for the hotel’s discreet side entrance. A black-clad figure slipped into the chilly night air minutes before 2 am and set out silently into the city streets. Klaus, equally silent, followed.

Eroica walked unhurriedly, apparently enjoying the night view of Brussels’ floodlit, centuries-old architecture. Klaus followed him up the Königstraat, counting the time to himself and waiting. Sure enough, Eroica paused just at two o’clock — he hadn’t looked at a watch, but neither had Klaus, who was hyperaware of the seconds ticking by. And Eroica smiled as the city lighting faded into darkness as it did every night at the hour of two. Overhead, stars became visible.

Klaus ignored the sky, all his attention on the dark figured now loping, still silently, toward the Königsplein and Belgium’s national art museums. Exhilaration of the chase overlay Klaus’s anger for the moment; Dorian clearly believed that Bonham’s work had ensured a power cut-off at 2 am, preventing any alarms from the museums to the police. The moment he tried to open any guarded door or window, he’d be in trouble and so would the English delegates to NATO and so would the whole conference.

It was not the Museum of Modern Art, but of Ancient Art, that Dorian approached by a side door. Klaus was not surprised. He watched as Dorian walked calmly up to the door and, without any noticeable hesitation, pushed it open and went in.

It shouldn’t have been that easy, even for Eroica. Klaus took a sharp, angry breath and followed. They were both in for it now, unless he was faster than the police.

No alarms sounded audibly within the museum, and the lighting was sporadic. Night lighting? The Major could see Dorian’s figure halfway up a narrow corridor, where a doorway spilled dim light onto his poised body and his faint smile. As he turned to stride toward an upward-leading staircase, Klaus moved in from the door, hearing his own feet.

Eroica threw a glance backward. "I’ll be ready for you in a minute, Simon."

Klaus covered the stretch of corridor that separated them as rapidly as he could, noting that the open doorway showed a security setup — screens, telltales, office equipment — that was completed by the guards sprawled sleeping in the chairs. He came up behind the silent figure halfway up the passage. "Eroica."

The blond head emerged with a start from Dorian’s cloak as he whirled, but when he spoke, it was in the smooth, drawling timbre that covered Eroica’s excitement and any other emotions during a caper. "Why, Major, how nice to see you."

"Eroica, this is far enough."

"On the contrary," said the maddening voice. "I’ve barely arrived." He took another step up the passage.

"You’re finished here. Come with me."

Eroica turned to look at him as if puzzled. "Are you working with the local gendarmerie, by any chance?"

"You know I’m not," hissed Klaus furiously. "Get away from here before they show up."

"Ah, but will they?" asked Eroica. He turned back and headed again for the barely-lit stairway.

The Major followed, too angry for caution. "Dorian!"

The next moment he found that Eroica had stopped and was meeting him with an enveloping embrace, the dark cloak swirling around both of them. Warm lips fastened on his neck and tracked a sensuous path to his ear. "Major, did you think I wouldn’t have someone on the inside? I don’t leave anything to chance. We’ve plenty of time." Eroica worked his way from ear to mouth and kissed Klaus as though his only thought was to drag him to the nearest convenient horizontal surface.

Klaus felt his anger turning to lust, and clutched desperately at Dorian’s arms. "No," he gasped, pulling away at last to let the anger return full-force. "Dorian, you fucking… you thief, you said you weren’t going to steal anything here!"

"Oh, yes," said the controlled voice in an airy tone. Klaus marveled that anyone, even Eroica, should sound so unmoved, so merely amused, after a kiss like that. "I’m afraid I changed my mind."

They were still standing body-to-body, all but touching. Klaus seized Eroica’s shoulders and shook him. "You were planning this, yesterday. You never intended to give it up!" Eroica’s body had gone limp and heavy in his hands, though the eyes fixed on Klaus remained alert and interested; it was only another move in the scuffle. Klaus opened his hands and watched Eroica’s body recover its graceful stance. "You lied to me!"

Eroica shrugged, gracefully. "And if I did?"

Klaus didn’t want to think about the implications of Dorian having lied to him. At this moment he had to get Dorian out and away from the museum. "Call this off, right now."

"No," said Eroica’s voice. "I came here to get something I want. I don’t plan to leave without it. That’s how I live." Emotion — perhaps only Eroica’s overriding passion for getting his own way — filled the voice without breaking the tone. One thin-gloved hand rose, so slowly that it didn’t trigger Klaus’s defense reflexes, and caressed his face. "I live for beauty."

Klaus caught at the hand and held it away from him. "Why did you come to Brussels?" he demanded, angrier than ever and cold with it.

"There were two reasons, Major. You know them both, now." Dorian stood quite still with his wrist trapped in Klaus’s hand but his eyes turned toward the stairway and the wide archway visible in the light at its top. No doubt it led to the public area of the museum where the paintings that Eroica craved were kept. "The whole building has been renovated," said Dorian, gesturing with his free hand. "The work’s a little severe, but it holds to classical proportions. Lovely, and very open. The Reubens room is up this way." He turned and tried to pull Klaus along with him.

Klaus stood still, holding the wrist so that Dorian could not take more than one step away from him. "Stop. We’re leaving now."

"I’m not!" Dorian shook his arm and failed to dislodge Klaus’s grip. "I came here for _The Hunt of Atalanta_ and I mean to have it!" Then the vehemence dropped out of his tone and he said, as if reasonably, "I’ve arranged for inside security to cut out, got the guards out of the way, and had the city power fixed. Do you think I’ll stop now?"

"I don’t think you have a choice," said Klaus. "You fool, the outside power isn’t cut off — I fixed it back. How long before someone will come to check on this building? I want you out of here before that happens." Eroica did not seem to be paying attention. "You can stay at the NATO conference, if that’s what you want. You can’t have any of the paintings here."

Eroica, still linked wrist-to-hand with Klaus, moved closer and leaned to brush against him. "Can’t I?" he murmured. "I won’t be long."

Klaus backed away, a step toward the outside door. "Try anything more and I’ll call in the Belgian police I’m not working for."

"You wouldn’t!"

It was Klaus’s turn to smile at Eroica, in a snarl. "Try me."

Eroica leered like a satyr. "I have tried you, darling. You’re wonderful. I love you, and I love beauty, and I love that painting you’re keeping me away from." His wrist tensed in Klaus’s fingers.

Klaus tightened his grip. "I’ll take your word about beauty, but the paintings here are going to stay here. You can’t steal them."

"Can you stop me?" Eroica smiled again, pulled away toward the galleries as if he expected to stroll off and carry away whatever he pleased, then pounced back toward Klaus and succeeded in freeing his wrist after a quick, hard struggle. He started toward the stairway at a swift run.

Klaus leapt after him. The head start was negligible and within a few steps he had caught up and immobilized Eroica in a painful grip. "Yes, I can."

Eroica tried to struggle in earnest this time. "Let me go!"

"No," said Klaus. "You may not know better than to burgle the national museum of a country where you’re a diplomatic guest, but it’s my duty to stop you."

The wrestling match that followed strained Klaus’s talents, but in the end his strength and training overbore Dorian’s 185 centimeters of sincere wrath. As Klaus carried him toward the exit, Dorian began cursing in open rage. His voice wasn't the smooth Eroica voice by then.

At the outside door, Dorian stopped struggling. Klaus kept a firm grip on him nevertheless as he shouldered bumpily through the doorway, letting it close behind them and ignoring an involuntary cry from the vicinity of his shoulder blades.

When they were well away from it, Dorian said in a defeated tone, "You can let me down now. It’s too late." His breath caught in a sob.

Klaus, feeling cautious rather than sympathetic, inquired, "Is something wrong with you?"

"The soporific vapor dosage is timed. The guards will wake up in a few minutes. I couldn’t do it now even if you’d let me." Eroica followed this with an unsteady gulp, but his voice was even. "Would you really have called the police on me? Handed me over to them?"

"I really would have called them. And alerted the museum authorities, and I’d have to tell your government’s representatives at NATO, whom you would have embarrassed. You’re their problem."

"Not your problem?"

"I’m guarding the conference. Its problems are my problems." Klaus set the other man down but did not let him go. He could not shout, but his low tones carried intense disgust. "This is the most selfish, idiotic thing I’ve ever seen you do. What is the matter with you?"

"Are you angry with me?"

"I am. I should be. You disobeyed me, and endangered the conference," Klaus hissed as he hurried himself and Dorian into a passage that wasn't part of the museum complex.

Dorian stopped there when Klaus pushed him to go further. "I don’t have to obey you."

"I would prefer it." Klaus had not thought a great deal about how his new relationship with Dorian should affect either of them outside their private meetings, but it suddenly seemed very desirable that Dorian should do what he asked. Was it possible?

"I’m not your… I don’t belong to you."

He sounded upset, but Eroica was never upset. "No, you don’t," said Klaus, baffled. Why was Dorian disturbed at Klaus for doing his duty? "You owe some loyalty to your nation’s interests, and NATO."

"I don’t…" Dorian took a deep breath and when he spoke again his voice was Eroica’s carefree lilt. "Klaus, do me a favor. Tell Jones the job is off. He’ll be waiting in the Königsplein with a car. The codeword is ‘Godiva’. He can take it from there. Just tell him that. Will you?"

"Where will you be?"

"Telling Bonham the same thing. He’s waiting now." Eroica dodged away, down the dark Ruysbroeckstraat toward a faintly-discernible waiting car. Klaus started to follow, but the car’s motor purred into life and it drew away before he could reach it.

Eroica had got away, and Klaus ground his teeth in residual rage, but he had done his duty successfully. The Musée des Arts Anciennes, however its security was disrupted, had all its contents intact: even if Klaus couldn’t believe Eroica’s word, Eroica’s frustrated rage was convincing. All parties, he believed, were best served now by letting the Earl go quietly back to his duties at the conference.

No authorities, uniformed or otherwise, had yet appeared in the quiet museum plaza. Eroica’s method of quieting the museum alarms seemed remarkably effective, and of course nothing else was amiss, officially.

There was a nondescript car waiting alone at the north side of the museum buildings. The driver was Eroica’s Jones, whose doubletake upon seeing the Major made up for a little of the night’s chagrin. "Eroica’s message is ‘Godiva.’ The job’s off," said Klaus curtly.

Jones heard the message in silence and peered long and hard at the messenger. Finally he nodded. "Yes, sir."

"What will you do now?"

"Nothing to trouble you, Major," said Jones, intonation irritatingly similar to Eroica’s on a job. "Eroica wishes to cancel the operation. It’s all quite in order. Did he leave any other word?"

"No." The Major started to turn away.

"Major Eberbach?"

"Yes?"

"Would you like a lift back to your hotel?"

Klaus thought longingly of a warm, quiet ride. The December night had not become any balmier while he and Eroica argued. But Eroica’s people knew too much as it was, so he snarled, "No!" with all his accustomed venom and stomped away for a kilometer’s cold walk before he could rest.

* * * * *

Dorian whisked himself into the waiting Bentley, heart beating and unpleasantly constricted with an emotion he had not recently associated with Klaus von dem Eberbach. "The job’s off. It’s no good. Let’s get away to… anywhere. Just anywhere."

"M’lord." The car was already in motion, and Bonham swept it neatly around a narrow corner and away from the museums. Two corners later, he cleared his throat.

"Yes?" said Dorian from his slumped, moody stare at his feet.

"Will there be any need to evade pursuit, m’lord?"

Dorian thought about it. Klaus had been upset, as though the museum’s safety were the same as NATO’s, but he hadn’t quite wanted to call in official force. "Probably not. Mind you, if you notice any pursuit, evade it."

"Will do."

Klaus had been angry, which was only to be expected from Klaus, but he’d also been almost cold. Almost impersonal. It was, Dorian decided, a step backward. Klaus needed to be personal. Angry or passionate or — most exciting — both at once, Klaus was far more interesting when he focused on a single person. Dorian Red Gloria for preference, of course. Tonight, in spite of flashes of indignation, he’d barely seemed to notice who he was fighting. Dorian leaned back in the luxurious seat and swore at the dark, invisible passenger-compartment ceiling.

Bonham cleared his throat again. "He caught you this time, did ’e? The Major?"

"He only… Yes, Bonham, he did," said Dorian. "He got ahead of me this time."

"I’m sorry, m’lord."

"Just drive, Mr. Bonham. Where are we going?" What had been the matter with Klaus?

"Right now? North, a bit northwest."

"North of Brussels," muttered Dorian. Holland was north of Belgium. "Amsterdam. Take us to Amsterdam."

"Yes, m’lord," said Bonham, and the dark highway outside the car sped past.

"Wake me when we get there." Dorian tried to relax in the seat. Amsterdam suggested intriguing thoughts. Dorian was in no mood for intrigue, thoughtful or otherwise, but just now he preferred his memories of Holland to tonight’s fiasco with Klaus.

Klaus hadn’t liked learning that Dorian could lie to him, but Dorian didn’t feel apologetic. Klaus had never minded misleading him, when it suited his duty, never hesitated to give orders to Eroica and his team. Dorian’s acquisition of beautiful art was his self-appointed duty. Klaus had no right to interfere.

Why should Klaus have thought he should? He had benefited from Dorian’s talents in the past. Did he think that sleeping with Dorian would change any of Dorian’s lifelong inclinations?

Dorian admitted to himself that he honestly hadn’t thought Klaus could outwit him. He wanted to think of something else for a while, anything else, before he could deal with that. A day in the uninhibited Rembrantsplein of Amsterdam would be just the thing. Why should he still be worrying about Klaus’s problems when the gay coffeeshops beckoned? Dorian had met an amazingly kinky Italian man there once…

No, he needed something cheerful. Maybe just some plain conversation over a cup of decent coffee. At least the Dutch didn’t think about stuffy morality all the time.

Klaus had sounded almost indifferent to him, in the Ancient Art Museum. Did he mean to draw back from Dorian if Dorian wouldn’t live by the Eberbach moral standards? He hoped not. Klaus might be capable of such a daunting stance, but Dorian knew he was not.

How had Klaus known about the caper, anyway? He’d have had to do some quick behind-the-scenes investigating, maybe had found Bonham and the others, to know as much as he knew. But he’d let them run until he was face-to-face with Dorian; and yesterday he’d asked once too often about Perry. Klaus wasn’t indifferent.

Klaus, Dorian decided, reminded him of his mother. He was too stuffy for his own good, and definitely too moral. The erstwhile Countess of Gloria had been furious, but not indifferent, on the long-ago day that she’d taken Dorian’s sisters and left the castle for the last time.

Still, Klaus hadn’t left him, not quite. Klaus had stopped his museum job but Klaus hadn’t wanted to send him away. Dorian had left _him_ , in fact, and it was Dorian’s option to return or not. If Klaus still wanted Dorian — and Dorian was confident that he did — what must he be thinking right now? Probably nothing yet. But when Klaus realized that Dorian was gone, perhaps tomorrow when he didn’t appear with the British party, what would he think?

Would Klaus even know what he wanted? When he was in bed with Dorian, it was not for stony devotion to duty. The superb, responsive body told Dorian a great deal that never appeared on Klaus’s face, and in private Klaus did not deny it, even if he could not speak of it.

Klaus was… intensely fascinating. That was a constant of Dorian’s life. Being in love with Klaus, however — even now with the delightful opportunity to hold Klaus’s attention with sex — did not mean that he, Dorian, _needed_ Klaus. Tomorrow, or rather later today, Dorian quite looked forward to some unclandestine meetings with men as unlike Klaus as possible.

* * * * *

Klaus rose no earlier than usual from his sleepless bed and reported for daytime duty at the NATO Headquarters building. The security teams were animated with gossip: some anxious and some amused. Whatever, he wondered, had Dorian done in his pique? The Major estimated with relief that his own appearance caused no less and no more head-turning or stifled commentary than usual, and he went to tour the building as he did every morning. If Dorian had committed some outrage since 2.30 am, it was clearly neither fatal nor reversible. The Major had duties of his own.

In due course, Major Eberbach and everyone else were officially informed that one British delegate, the Earl of Gloria, had gone missing. Kidnapping was feared but not confirmed. Sir William and all other members of the British party were eager to cooperate in any investigations that might be necessary, and would like to be kept informed of progress toward determining the Earl’s whereabouts and safety. All vigilance was to be exercised, but no change in the conference schedule would be made at this time, announced Colonel Desti.

Thus warned, the agents were sent to their duty-roster assignments, Mr. C showing unseemly signs of amusement despite the Major’s sourest glare. C and D were on liaison again, which gave them far too little to do except talk. Unnecessary conversation was one of the hazards of guard duty, in Klaus’s opinion.

Klaus sat at his desk and brooded. It was necessary, of course, to contribute his knowledge to the investigation, but how much was relevant? Having Eroica jailed for attempted burglary of Belgium’s national treasures would help the NATO conference no more today than it would have last night. On the other hand, it was more important than ever to learn how much Dorian’s countrymen knew about him and his activities.

Klaus hated dealing with people he could not control.

His request for an urgent interview with Mr. Holman was granted with alacrity; and in the designated meeting room he found two men waiting, one tense with exasperation and one rigid with fright. "Thank you for seeing me so promptly, Mr. Holman, Mr. Marsh."

"Major Eberbach," acknowledged the exasperated Mr. Holman, and remembered to shake hands. The room, intended for larger meetings, was cavernous behind them and only half-lit without the table lamps’ illumination.

"Is there any bad news about the Earl?" blurted the frightened Mr. Marsh, as he offered a hand to Klaus in his turn.

"I have some information that may be useful to you. Forgive me, please, but I would rather speak to Mr. Holman privately if he will allow it."

Mr. Marsh cast a glance at Holman, who frowned but said, "Yes, of course, if that’s what you want, Major. Excuse us, Reg."

When Mr. Marsh had gone, the Major obeyed Holman’s nod toward the table and its chairs. "Well," said Holman as they seated themselves uncomfortably at a corner of the polished surface, "can you tell me anything about the Earl's whereabouts?"

Klaus kept his face entirely neutral. "I’ve become acquainted with him in the course of my duties for NATO."

"Really?" asked Holman, eyebrows rising. He was nearly as tall as Dorian and less fair, even faintly tanned, but very English. His pale blue eyes assessed Klaus and came to no visible conclusion. "I’m perfectly aware that Lord Gloria is homosexual."

Klaus scowled and called back an expletive. He wanted Holman’s cooperation. "Lord Gloria’s tastes are more than apparent to the world." And Major Eberbach’s must remain hidden. Klaus scowled harder. "I must ask for your discretion in a matter that affects NATO."

"I’m at this conference to discuss NATO’s business, Major," Holman reminded him. "Most of it is confidential, at present." He shrugged. "What about Lord Gloria?"

"The Earl works closely at times with some NATO offices in West Germany, on highly classified projects. His irregularities of character are tiresome but they don’t impede the work he does."

Holman’s calendar age nearly matched the Major’s, but when he chuckled suddenly, he seemed much more like Dorian. "And you have to work with him, and he, ah, ‘gets right up your nose.’ Is that it, Major?"

Klaus said, with the stolid neutrality that was all the expression he could summon up: "I cannot discuss his work or my own."

Holman was looking thoughtful. "So that’s it. Dorian works with NATO." He shook his head. "Dorian! I suppose that accounts for his being so interested in joining Sir William for this conference. Sir William would have left him behind if he didn’t know enough to be useful."

Klaus seized on the opportunity to learn something. "Was it Lord Gloria’s proposal from the start that he be included in the delegation, sir?"

"Oh, yes. I’d never have thought of asking him, but he made a good case for himself as a sort of extra envoy, even if those ‘irregularities’ aren’t quite…" He shrugged again.

"They are not suitable for a nation’s public representative," said Klaus, in an entirely colorless tone.

Holman nodded. "Something like that. Mind you, Dorian carries it off with an air — he puts some of us to shame for style, and he’s very sharp when he wants to be." He tilted his head toward Klaus. "It’s a bit of a relief, to tell the truth, that you say he has reason for knowing as much as he does about NATO. I was wondering what sort of cuckoo he’d hatched into." With another glance at the Major, he reached into his jacket for an engraved cigarette case. "Will you join me, Major?"

His expression of inquiry was a shade too extravagant, to Klaus’s eyes, and Klaus tried to ignore it. "No, thank you. Please smoke if you wish to."

Holman lit the cigarette and drew air through it. Klaus carefully did not watch, but the scent of tobacco invaded his nose seductively. "Are you saying," Holman asked carefully, "that Lord Gloria’s disappearance today should not be of concern to us?"

Klaus maintained the neutral expression. "Not precisely. I do have reason to believe that he left the vicinity of this conference voluntarily rather than under duress."

"‘Reason to believe…’" mused Holman. "What a useful phrase. Major, have you said this much in order to tell me that the rest is classified? Even to the British Foreign Minister, who is Lord Gloria’s superior at this conference?"

"Lord Gloria’s superior when he is doing… other work for NATO has very clear limits on what may be revealed."

"Is that you, by any chance?" asked Holman directly.

"No," said Klaus. It was not a lie; technically his Chief hired and directed Eroica.

Holman puffed out a jaunty cloud of smoke. "If you can't give us information about his whereabouts or activities, I do hope you can produce him again, safe and sound, before the closing assembly on Friday."

"The Earl is working independently at the moment. I can’t speak for his safety beyond yesterday evening."

"Ah, yes, yesterday," murmured Holman. "How late was it you saw him?" At Klaus’s stony expression he added, "Adding together what we both know about Dorian’s movements may be useful, don’t you think?"

"Then tell me what you know, if you want to help us safeguard him. I understood that he is a friend of yours. Is this correct?"

Holman grimaced. "He has been, Major. I hope that meets with your approval." Klaus responded to this with a frown, since he was not at all sure what he approved of. The Englishman went on, "He was brought along on the trip to speak to some Belgian and Italian ministers; his attendance at today’s and tomorrow’s sessions isn’t crucial, and he knew it… knows it."

Klaus allowed himself to look directly at Holman as he asked, "So that he might have felt at liberty to leave Brussels as of last night?" Holman still seemed like nothing more and nothing less than a British Foreign Office deputy undersecretary, busy, worried, and admirably self-composed.

Holman nodded. "Exactly, Major. It’s not really proper, of course, but I’m worried mostly that he left no word, as far as I know, with anyone… ?" He raised his brows.

"He didn’t," confirmed Klaus.

"…but it’s true that his absence doesn’t threaten the conference’s progress or Sir William’s part in it. I can tell you that Lord Gloria was present at a discussion with Sir William and Mr. Marsh and myself just after midnight yesterday evening, in Sir William’s hotel room. I’m afraid that’s the last I saw of him."

"Did you hear anything from him, or about him, after that time?"

"Nothing except what you’ve said just now." Holman reached for an ashtray embossed with the NATO sigil and tapped ash off his cigarette. "Of course, the Earl is a wealthy target for would-be kidnappers at any time. Have you considered that?"

Klaus had not thought to fear such a possibility. "I can only trust that it isn’t the case here. It would be a most extraordinary coincidence." And, he thought, any kidnappers would find Dorian a difficult captive to hold. His mouth flexed in some grimace he could not name. "An investigation of the Earl’s whereabouts is in motion at the moment. However, what you have told me makes it even more likely that his absence is voluntary. Please trust that my department of NATO is the best agency to find him."

"Do you mean the conference’s security teams?"

Klaus gave him a hard, insincere smile. "Yes, of course that’s what I mean." He saw Holman’s understanding, and he only hoped that Holman didn’t understand too much.

* * * * *

The disappearance of one delegate, however inessential, had left the security teams uneasy. However, when the switchboard received an incoming call at noon precisely, matters became serious.

The call had been taped, and at 12.10 Colonel Desti played it for the three other security-team heads he commanded during the NATO conference — the Major, a Spanish Captain Martinez, and Bill Higgens of the CIA. The tape demanded, in scratchy-voiced, newscaster-bland English, the reduction of Europe’s industry for the sake of its ecology, with specific threats if the conference did not comply. The four men listened in disbelief, and three of them turned to stare at Major Eberbach when the tape reached its final, "Green Europe!"

Klaus snarled, "The Greens are crackpots. They are not regarded as serious in the legislature."

Higgens said, in a drawl that exceeded Dorian’s at his most irritating, "Looks like they want to be taken seriously, wouldn’t you say?"

Martinez suggested, "I know of these people. They are not violent. We are dealing here with either impostors or a fanatic group."

"The fanatics we always have with us," drawled Higgens. "God bless ’em, cause no one else will. ’Specially not me. Anyone think they’ll do what they threaten?"

"It is not our task to think otherwise," said Colonel Desti.

"Of course it is not," said Martinez. "I believe we should assess how well-equipped they are to ‘blow the building into rubble’ as a first step in converting Europe into a natural wilderness."

"They have never seen wilderness," said the Major in disgust. "They’d want their factories back soon enough if they ever saw a wolf coming after them."

"Or a bear," said Higgens, with a snort. "Muscovite variety, maybe."

"Gentlemen!" Desti cut through the chatter. "It is these Greens who are coming after us now. Conference planning includes a revision of the meeting schedule to be used for this event. The delegates must be brought to the new locations of their meetings — Captain Martinez, please make available your men as drivers and guards to transport the delegates for each meeting session. I shall assign extra of my officers and men to you as well.

"This building must be evacuated. We have procedures for this also, which will be put into effect within minutes. My bomb-search squad is already going through the building."

"Expensive conference," said Higgens in his drawl, but his eyes watched Desti closely.

"It would be more expensive if the threat is realized, Mr. Higgens. Major, your team and mine shall search for the people who made the threat."

"Sir," said Eberbach. It suited him.

"Mr. Higgens, your Defense Secretary has requested that you continue to safeguard the American delegation."

"S'pose I must," said Higgens. Klaus scowled, although it seemed that Higgens might be less dilatory than elaborately informal. Americans!

"There will be copies of the new meeting-location schedules here in a few minutes. The relocation procedure will be as follows…"

Desti began outlining plans and the Major listened, but his mind refused to concentrate totally. Odd thoughts about Dorian intruded on the lecture: Where was he? Had he known that this would happen? Surely not, but… Had he stayed away from the conference on purpose this morning or had he been kidnapped — it seemed less unlikely now — as further leverage against them all? Was he safe?

If Dorian had known nothing of the so-called Greens’ prospective threat, why had he left and where had he gone? Would he come back?

When Desti had finished the first quick spate of instructions and orders, when the civilians had been removed from the NATO Headquarters building and the disrupted conference was under way again and arrangements were being invoked from the backup plans for relocating each delegate’s party to another hotel, when Mr. Higgens’ drawl had been returned to its duty of guarding the Virginia-born U.S. Secretary of Defense, when Desti and a Belgian psychologist and Klaus were in their new, makeshift security office listening to the tape again for clues, it occurred to Klaus that if the Earl returned to the conference, he would find the headquarters building under siege and his colleagues’ hotel quite empty of NATO personnel. He opened his mouth to suggest as much, and closed it quickly. There wasn’t anything he could or would do to change Colonel Desti’s relocation plans.

When he briefed his team, the Major resisted the impulse to speak first to Holman. Holman was a delegate, not part of the security forces. Major Eberbach had a job to do.

As it was, when the situation had been explained to Eberbach’s subordinates, Mr. C appeared to be thinking of something other than tracking down Green, or quasi-Green, terrorists. Before he could say anything to explain his abstraction, the Major called on him. "Mr. C, I want you to join the team that’s handling the delegates’ security at the new conference venue. They’ll be glad of one familiar face."

"Sir," said C.

"Use your discretion in handling any special liaison problems," said the Major, and watched C’s sandy eyebrows acknowledge the covert order. He knew Eroica and Eroica’s people; he could find out what they knew and perhaps keep them out of trouble.

"Yes, sir."

If they weren’t already in trouble, of course.

* * * * *

Amsterdam, gray under clouds that threatened a chill rain, nevertheless looked splendidly welcoming to Dorian. The shops on the Kerkstraat spilled warm, coffee-scented air and light into the misty atmosphere at regular intervals. Dorian, rested after a few hours in a hotel bed, sauntered down the curving street in crimson silk and fur, reveling in the outrageous color after the staid outfits he’d been wearing in Brussels. Respectability was so tedious.

Shop doors tempted him, and after the first Dorian saw no reason to resist. Warmth and light and company were his goals; motion, however gratifying, only a means to the end. He squeezed his way into a white-framed door designed for seventeenth-century dimensions, stood up gingerly in a small, square, white enclosure, and surveyed the territory. It was multileveled, white, crowded with tables, the tables crowded with men, all of it smelling richly of coffee. Dorian knew Dutch, but using English announced his presence quickly. "Hallo," he said with cheerful confidence to the young man (be-earringed, smiling, and rather tasty-looking) in charge of the coffee counter.

"Hallo," said the young man, eyeing Dorian’s open crimson shirt gratifyingly.

"One coffee, please, with everything."

"Everything?" The young man raised an eyebrow toward his fetchingly cropped bangs.

Dorian waved his eyelashes. "What’s the house speciality?"

The boy laughed, signalled someone, and was handed a cup. "Here." He pushed the plain-white cup topped with white froth and cinnamon toward Dorian. "You’ll like it. Take a seat anywhere. Two guilders."

Dorian paid him and carried the cup up a half-flight of square white stairs to find a knot of men arguing over empty cups under steam-shrouded windows. He listened to the flow of words until two of the arguers, the most vehement, clapped the remaining two on the back, donned jackets, and left. Dorian shook back his curls and raised his eyebrows at the remaining two. "Hallo."

"Hello, is it English?" asked one, rather carefully.

"Yes. My name is Dorian." These two were in their late twenties, with the look of bohemian poverty — but neither too bohemian nor too poor.

The other man nodded. "I’m Michael," he said, and added without a pause, "Rickart here is shy, but I’m not. How do you do, man?"

Dorian had no intention of explaining that his difficult lover had failed to arrest him and thus driven him out of Brussels for the moment. "I’ve been to Amsterdam before. Isn’t it a wonderful place to come back to?" He sipped at his coffee. "Do you live here, or are you visiting?"

They lived there, not together, and presently Michael offered to show Dorian where to find appropriate smoking materials for the evening. This led, predictably, to a quiet, giggly interlude of disjointed talk in Dorian’s hotel suite living-room.

"’S the colors," said Michael earnestly, "man. The ones past 3800 angstroms. ’S beyond visible colors, ’s where the pigments go black. Those are the ones I want." He’d turned out to be a genuine, if undiscovered, modern artist, and Dorian, bemused, did not gainsay him. "S’mtimes I think I’ll do light fixtures after all, but I always run into the glass." He took another drag on the pipe they were sharing and added, "Man."

"Glass?" asked Dorian, wondering if that were a metaphor. He thought he liked it.

"Like that." Michael gestured at the television screen, whose moving images had been silenced when they lit up. Dorian preferred his own mental soundtrack, or in this case, Michael’s. Perhaps this qualified as research on modern art after all. He laughed.

"Glass, man," repeated Michael.

"Man…" repeated Dorian. Michael was certainly that. Hash made him randy which was, of course, the point. If he could just get Michael off this sidetrack about colors, now…

"It cuts out the ultra frequencies," said Michael.

"Why do you want to paint something no one can see?" asked Dorian.

"Why not, man?" giggled Michael, distracted from the artistic infinite by some more earthly consideration — possibly Dorian’s hand on his thigh.

"Just black on black…" pursued Dorian, fondling a black-denim-clad knee.

"No, no, they’re different _colors_ of black," insisted Michael, hitching himself closer to Dorian on the sofa they shared. "Even if you can’t see ’em, they’re there."

"True, delightfully true," murmured Dorian. The harsh-sweet smoke from the pipe was in his head now, filling it with colored lust that could be enjoyed for aeons. He patted the knee under his hand, feeling the smooth rasp of the cloth.

"Man, that’s why I do it… seeing the unseen." He caught Dorian’s hand and closed his eyes. "Like this… I see you."

"Mmm, what do you see?"

Michael’s blue eyes opened wide at Dorian. "You, man. Fucking. That’s what you do, right?"

Dorian giggled. "Right. Come through the looking-glass with me." Ignoring the television, he led Michael into the suite’s rather overdone main bedroom. There was, indeed, a mirror mounted over the bed, a touch Dorian had considered tacky this morning, but which might prove interesting after all.

Michael, effectively distracted from his black-light theory, was trying not to be impressed. "We all have to be somewhere, man." After a moment, he gave up on the blasé pose and gazed around in frank amazement. "I didn’t know hotel beds were ever that large."

Dorian laughed again. He was here. Klaus was back at NATO. Any place Klaus ever was, was NATO. Dorian wasn’t going to worry about it. "Just for you, Mike. Or Michael?"

"Either one, man. Really. But why all this?"

"Why not?" Dorian gave in to another fit of giggles, then wondered if it was a good idea, and went on laughing anyway. Michael didn’t seem to mind. The colors of lust laughed with him, within him.

"All this for an undiscovered artist and a man who fucks…"

"I love artists," Dorian assured him, eyeing Michael’s rounded, black denim crotch. "I didn’t bring you here to prove anything." He stretched languidly and pulled off his shirt. "I don’t have to prove anything." Lust filled his veins, fizzing gently. It was in color, like the second television set in here that also broadcast silent, colored movement.

Now Michael was looking at him, the wide eyes appreciating him openly. "You sure don’t, man. You are a walking bundle of colors."

"Is that a compliment?"

"The best, man," said Michael, unbuttoning his shirt. Dorian noticed that he was a natural redhead with a very pretty chest.

"Do go on," he urged. "The bed isn’t just for show." He watched Michael undress, not worrying about anything, occasionally pulling off garments of his own and letting them fall on the floor.

The television mouthed silence to itself in the background, its colors less bright than the lust that filled Dorian’s mind as the two of them coupled on the bed. They played at it slowly until hormonal urgency overcame the languid high; then nothing mattered but climax, and after that nothing mattered at all. Dorian floated on the bed, on Michael’s sleepy muttering about violets, and later on a second pipeful that finished the hash.

Some time afterward, when twilight and hunger intruded on their lazy world, Dorian reached for the telephone, still feeling an impulse to giggle when it dropped upside-down onto the bed and bounced. He righted it and punched for room service.

After ordering coffee and dinner for the two of them, he pulled a sheet over Michael’s drowsing body and wandered into the suite’s living room. Bonham, when he looked up from the television, didn’t flicker an eyelid at the sight of his naked employer.

"Oh, you’re here," yawned Dorian.

"M’lord," shrugged Bonham, and focused again on Dutch broadcasting.

"Do you understand any of that?"

"The pictures are fine." As if to illustrate Bonham’s point, a screen full of unclad bodies, male, female and indeterminate, appeared. It looked like a summertime beach scene. Or something.

Dorian giggled. "Whatever. Dinner should be delivered soon. Knock on my door when it arrives. The visitor’s name is Michael. Don’t bother him unless you have to." He retired to the bedroom, absently raising the volume on the television there, although the screen showed a quite untitillating view of fishing boats.

A shower and two steak sandwiches later, the television’s mutter caught Dorian’s attention. "Hush," he commanded Michael, cutting off a stream of post-hash, post-sex babble.

"…man," said Michael, and fell obediently silent.

"…NATO Ministerial Conference in Brussels is still in session. Word was received this noon that a group claiming to speak for the Green Party threatened violent action if the agenda they dictate is not adopted by all NATO nations. We are told the demands are less military than ecological in nature, but a representative of the Greens established in Bonn denies any connection…"

Awareness slammed into Dorian’s foggy brain. Klaus. The conference in Brussels. Perry. What had the Greens, or whoever it was, threatened? Would they really harm the conference? Would it endanger Klaus?

Klaus wouldn’t wait to be put in danger. He’d go out hunting the source of the trouble. Dorian remembered a house in the North Downs, a heads-of-state meeting, a bomb disguised as a vase. That time Klaus hadn’t slept for two days before the vase was discovered.

He probably hadn’t slept much last night; Dorian hadn’t, after all. He giggled.

"Is it funny?" asked Michael.

"No," said Dorian. The Green scare would take Klaus’s mind off his other problems; maybe that was just as well for Klaus, but Dorian found that he didn’t want Klaus to forget him. "It’s something else. I’ll have to leave now. You’ve been a sweetie, but I can’t stay and I can’t take you with me. I’m sorry."

" _You’re_ sorry?" Michael looked genuinely disappointed, and his gaze was on Dorian’s bare legs. "Man. Right away?"

"I’m afraid so. The room's yours until morning, but I have to leave. Man." Dorian shrugged in an imitation of Michael. With the dregs of the colored lust he still noticed the orange hair on Michael’s chest, but something more important called to him from the dark.

* * * * *

Major Eberbach had had a very long twelve hours. Since noon he’d reassured a number of disgruntled diplomats as to the safety of their home nations, possessions, freedom, dignity and intact skins, and had learned (after the fact, from Mr. B) of the discovery and disarming of a very large, live and metaphorically ticking bomb in the basement level of the NATO headquarters building.

The "device" (as Desti preferred to call it) would have blown the building — and Eroica, if he’d been in it — to pieces precisely at midnight. Now.

Klaus listened intently as one date change to another, although fifteen kilometers now separated him from the NATO building. The conference’s back-up venue was someone’s country estate house, chosen for its isolation, borrowed for the month, and elaborately secured against intruders. From it, there was no chance of hearing anything less than the complete obliteration of northeast Brussels, but Klaus took a moment to listen and think. If the so-called Greens had left more than one bomb at the headquarters, primed and set for midnight…

He heard nothing except the rustling of paper as he and agents E and F and a pair of Desti’s Belgians sorted through a mountain of figures that detailed the marketing and distribution of explosives throughout Western Europe. The potential for illegal appropriation of same was, in retrospect, appalling. Klaus’s ashtray was full, but he lit up again anyway.

The disarmed bomb was undergoing detailed analysis, but the bomb squad’s Lieutenant Mermel had reported that the detonator was a neat, custom-made piece with an electronic timer. Klaus was looking forward to examining the gadgetry himself, but until the lab experts released it, he and those agents still awake were doing what they could to pinpoint any recent thefts of explosives. It was an improvement, at least, over listening to Mermel’s description of the bomb: "It’s bigger than a whore’s purse and it would blow us to where her heart is," delivered in grave Belgian French.

No one knew how the thing had been placed in the NATO building. The staff, scores of people in all, could not be eliminated. Klaus found himself wishing Eroica were available for consultation. Getting something into or out of a place where it should not be was exactly the kind of problem Eroica invariably solved with insulting ease.

Mr. C had reported that Eroica’s Bonham was no more to be found than Eroica. There was, however, a Mr. James who claimed to represent Eroica’s interests, said C with visible reluctance. The Major had hastily declined to meet James. He had enough problems.

The British delegation had had to be dissuaded from leaving messages directing Lord Gloria (and anyone else, such as a terrorist kidnapper) to their new location. Colonel Desti and Major Eberbach had assured them that if the Earl returned to Brussels, he would be found and apprised of the new situation. Neither mentioned that Lord Gloria would have to satisfy them of his innocence of the bomb threat itself as soon as he reappeared, though from certain questions that Mr. Holman did not ask, Klaus was sure he was aware of it.

By midnight, the investigation team was buried in reports on explosives and also on the known groups — with and without affiliation to Greens of any description — that might have constructed the bomb. More data was added to the stack constantly, by telefax and by courier packets that arrived with every plane that touched down at the airport. When Mr. C appeared in the onetime servants’-hall sitting room that was now the NATO conference’s on-site security headquarters, Klaus looked up blearily from a badly printed fax sheet of figures that Mr. F had for some reason considered significant. "Yes?"

"Sir."

"C? Have you something to say?" Klaus knew that his temper became chancy when he missed as much sleep as he had yesterday. He didn’t care.

"Yes, sir." C appeared to be uncomfortable. "The British delegate…"

"What does Mr. Holman want?"

"Sir, the other British delegate… He’s returned."

Klaus found that he was at the door of the room, beside C, all papers discarded on the table, before he was aware of moving. "Er— Lord Gloria?"

C’s eyes motioned toward the empty corridor, and Klaus followed him out and closed the door on E, F and the Belgian data analysts alike.

"Is he here?" demanded Klaus.

"No, sir. Not yet, sir," added C quickly. "Colonel Desti just telephoned. Lord Gloria was seen, and Desti’s men picked him up, at the hotel where Bonham and James are registered. He crossed the border into Belgium two hours ago, from the Netherlands, and claims to have spent the day in Amsterdam. The Colonel expects to confirm it momentarily."

"And if he does?" The telephone call to the NATO building had not been traced successfully. It could have come from Amsterdam as easily as from anywhere else with a working telephone system.

"I thought the inference was obvious, sir."

Klaus restrained his aggravation and merely raised his eyebrows and looked, with deliberate impatience, down at C. No inference was obvious to him.

"About why he left and what he was doing, sir."

"Mr. C," said Klaus freezingly, "please explain yourself. If you can explain Eroica, so much the better."

Mr. C took a careful breath and said, "Sir…" and then took another breath as though delaying. He seemed ready to crawl into the nearest mousehole.

"Does this somehow compromise him, or clear him, of complicity in the Greens’ threat?"

"Oh. Yes — that is, not entirely, sir. He’s with Desti now, but the Colonel is very likely to release him. As I understand it." C’s sandy-blond hair clashed oddly with a flushed face.

"Has Desti called Sir William — the British chief delegate?"

"I am told so, sir."

"Ah." Klaus stood still and tried to think, battling irritation and fatigue. "Desti’s in Brussels, at his own office in the administration building, isn’t he? Not here tonight?"

"Yes, sir. He’s at the Cité."

"Drive me there. I’ll need a report on the debriefing."

"Sir."

They were on their way into Brussels on the dark, forest-shrouded road within minutes. Klaus asked, as soon as they were outside the security perimeter of the conference mansion, "Is the car clean?"

"Yes, sir."

"Then please explain Eroica. If you can."

"He went to Amsterdam, sir."

"You said that earlier."

"Ah, yes, sir. Ah… Eroica prefers male companions. He often goes to Amsterdam when he seems to want… a brief period of refreshment."

"What?!" Klaus hadn’t meant to say it, and he hadn’t meant to shout.

"Sir?" C managed a totally neutral tone of voice.

"Do you mean that that pervert has been… engaging in…" Klaus couldn’t say it. He recalled Dorian’s hands and mouth on his body, recalled the answering tensions and apparent pleasure of Dorian’s body to his own actions. He could not put words to any of it.

Mr. C’s voice was matter-of-fact and faintly puzzled — exactly what Klaus would expect if C were unaware that the Major knew more than he should of Eroica’s sexual practices. "He makes no secret of his being gay, sir. Or of his travels when he’s in his proper character as Lord Gloria. He’s overdue for one of these short trips, by his usual pattern, and it would be more likely for him to do that than to threaten a NATO conference on behalf of anti-industrialists."

With some distant part of his mind, Klaus was glad that either his own discretion or C’s was faultless. The same could not be said of Eroica. "Do you mean," said Klaus quite coldly, "that NATO Intelligence has been keeping track of Lord Gloria’s private life?"

"Of Eroica’s movements, yes, sir."

"For what purpose? Since I haven’t been given the information?"

"You have asked, sir, to be told only what was ‘relevant to the case’ when Eroica was assigned to one of your missions."

That was true, though Klaus ground his teeth over it now. It had always been evident that the Chief knew everything he needed to about Eroica’s conduct. Klaus felt frozen in hell. "I see. Has Eroica deviated from his pattern of behavior in any other way?"

C shrugged, and turned off the highway onto the ring of boulevards around the Old City sector. "Not that we know of, sir." Klaus said nothing more for the remainder of the drive, and C had the good sense to leave the silence unbroken.

Klaus had to wait fifteen fuming minutes before Lord Gloria emerged from Colonel Desti’s office. The Earl’s smile when he saw Klaus went from relief to a subtle triumph that did not waver when Klaus said, abruptly, "Wait here," and brushed past him into the inner office.

Klaus got little satisfaction from his interview with Desti, however, for the Colonel confirmed C’s speculations in sufficient detail to make it clear that Dorian had probably had no time to spare for terrorist plots en route to, or in, Amsterdam; the account of Dorian’s activities, though circumstantial, was far too explicit to mistake what he _had_ been doing. Major Eberbach obviously annoyed Desti by his insistence on learning the details at once, before Lord Gloria might return to his compatriots.

"I am releasing him to Sir William Bridges," said Desti, with finality, after Klaus had come to the verge of insubordination. "It is my decision, Major, that Lord Gloria, as a British diplomat, is best considered accountable to the British Foreign Minister who brought him here. You may question him, if you still believe he knows something directly useful to your investigation, only with his permission and observing the courtesies of diplomacy between governments." His tone said that he didn’t think the Major capable of diplomacy.

"Sir," said the Major, wooden with rage. "Yes, sir. Thank you, sir."

"May I ask how much progress has been made by your team in identifying the makers of the device?" asked Desti, pointedly.

"We have eliminated perhaps half the known groups of organized terrorist-tactic users in Europe. Some are unlikely to have access to this class of explosives; some are virtually certain to have made their own claims instead of the Greens’; few have any history of electronic expertise at the level of the device we found. We’re concentrating on that angle at the moment," said Klaus with instant precision. He had not, despite his preoccupation with Eroica, been idle.

Desti rendered a small, meaningless, Gallic smile. "Keep on, then, Major. Do not annoy the conference delegates without cause. You may go."

Klaus went. Eroica was waiting, still serene but garish in his shamelessly ostentatious fur and silks and all his waving curls. Klaus remembered that Desti would have seen Eroica’s habitual flashy style for the first time this evening, and realized why the Colonel had been so ready to send Eroica back for the British party to deal with.

"I’ll take you to the British party’s new hotel," he said to the gaudy vision, and then, "Mr. C, which is it?"

"Shall I drive you, sir?"

Security demanded no less. "Do that, C. And where are we quartered tonight?"

"The same, sir."

"Drive us all there, then."

The short drive was accomplished in perfect silence, Dorian bland, C colorless, the Major feeling like a repressed volcano. When he got Dorian alone…

They were met in the entrance hall by Mr. Marsh and Mr. Holman, who took one askance look each at the vividly immodest and extremely red outfit on their most junior colleague and thereafter maintained a composed lack of interest in it. They expressed their thanks to Major Eberbach with apparent sincerity and were firm in their insistence that Lord Gloria must speak with Sir William immediately.

It did not distress Klaus at all that Dorian’s diplomatic career would undoubtedly suffer an immediate halt; however, if he couldn’t speak to Dorian soon, alone and assured of no surveillance, he was likely to burst.

It was not a pleasant feeling, and it was relieved only very slightly by the quick mutter of "north elevator, top floor," that he heard from Dorian between the exclamations and greetings, after Dorian’s first glance around the new hotel’s lobby layout.

It took an hour before, having learned the patrol schedule for Captain Martinez’ men in the hotel and of the unbugged status of the whole hotel as of late afternoon Tuesday (now yesterday), Klaus could escape his room and take the north elevator to its highest setting.

Eroica was waiting for him, still in the red silk outfit, still smiling serenely. "Hello, darling," he said when the elevator had closed and departed. "The floor here is mostly empty. Come in." He opened one door into the impersonal blankness of an unoccupied hotel room.

Klaus followed the colorful figure, keeping his mask of disinterest in place until he was sure the room was quite empty but for the two of them. Finally, enclosed in what he devoutly hoped was a private box of walls and draped windows, he focused his stare on Dorian, who leaned, picturesquely hipshot and evidencing no expression but faint amusement, against a chair.

Unable to summon the eruption of rage that seethed in his vitals, Klaus said only, "Why?"

It came out sounding rather formal. Dorian straightened and shrugged artfully. "Ahh," he drawled, "‘why’ what? Why all the care to make sure no one’s listening under the bed? Why talk up here instead of in a room next door to Perry’s? Why was I met by so many fascinating men when I came back from my little trip?"

"Why did you leave Brussels?" It sounded almost sharp — better, but only the surface of what Klaus felt.

"I’m sure that’s obvious." Dorian tossed his head. "Darling."

"Tell me anyway." It felt like a threat, which suited Klaus.

"I was annoyed at you, darling," said Dorian.

"No doubt. Is that sufficient reason to abandon your duty?"

"Duty?" Dorian looked genuinely amazed for a moment, then sank gracefully into the chair and smiled. "You flatter me. I’m sure Perry told you — he told me he told you — that I’m not essential to the conference sessions."

"But he was quite upset that you left them."

"That," said Dorian, sitting upright, "is the concern of the British Foreign Office, and not of NATO. You might ask instead why I came back."

"Does it concern me?"

"Yes."

"How?" demanded Klaus, still unable to scream his anger and shake answers out of this very aggravating man. Words were insufficient, but they were all he could use, as yet.

"I came back," said Dorian, and there was no hint of frivolity in his tone, "when I heard the conference was in danger, because I knew you would be in danger."

"Does that mean you were concerned for me, or just curious what I would do?"

Dorian cocked his head and eyed Klaus consideringly. "Shouldn’t I be concerned for you?"

"I don’t know." Klaus stood, clenching his fists and opening them. "Why interrupt your activities in Amsterdam to rush back here?"

Dorian shrugged, but the action seemed less casual than it might have a few minutes earlier. "Why not?"

Klaus made a point of looking over the seductive clothing. "You might easily have been too preoccupied to care about anything here." It was crude sarcasm, but at least it sounded nearly as angry as Klaus felt.

Dorian regarded him soberly now, not responding to the hostile tone. "I should have been, perhaps," he said, "but I wasn’t. Remember that, Klaus."

"What were you doing!?"

But Dorian smiled, and the blue eyes lit with fierce anticipation. He fluttered a hand and shrugged a totally lascivious suggestion. "Dear me, don’t you know?"

"I want to know!"

"I’ll bet you don’t — but you asked. What do you think I was doing?"

The fey smile was the last straw. Klaus broke from his stance and strode over to Dorian’s chair, but he could only stand and stare down at the calm, lying, beautiful face. "I think you were screwing someone!" he heard himself say, in a voice he barely knew was his own.

Dorian’s eyes widened appreciatively. "Right the first time."

Before he knew what he was going to say, Klaus heard his own voice: "Why?" He felt wounded, but he didn’t know where.

Dorian fluttered his hands. "Why not? I felt like it. Is that what’s bothering you?"

"Yes!"

"I thought we’d get to it," said Dorian, and his voice now was level. "Tell me, why should that bother you in the least, little way?"

"Because you’re…" Klaus could not bring himself to say, "screwing me," which was in any case an imprecise description. "…You’re… you’re… my…"

Dorian raised sarcastic eyebrows, and with no other gesture, Klaus became aware that the Englishman was angry, perhaps as angry as he was. "My… what?"

Any conceivable description of what Dorian was to him could not be said aloud, by Klaus in Dorian’s hearing. "What you are…"

"Oh?" Dorian drawled, furious and deliberately infuriating. "What am I?"

Obscene and insulting epithets rang in Klaus’s mind. They were true, but they did not describe the convoluted exchange of emotion which he shared, so painfully and so inevitably, with Dorian.

Dorian’s eyebrows remained at their new angle. "Your… lover?" He threw out the word with triumphant finality.

"Yes! If that is what you wish to call it."

"That is what I call it," said Dorian silkily, "sometimes. But _your_ lover? Am I _your_ lover?"

Klaus was far too angry to care about niceties. Between the two of them in strictest private existed the relationship described by the English word "lover" in one of its senses. "Yes!"

"What if I’m not _your_ anything?"

"Do you deny it?" growled Klaus, confused but standing his ground.

"Oh, that." Dorian dismissed physical intimacy with a mocking wave. "That means you’re _my_ lover, doesn’t it?"

Klaus stared at him, eyes narrowing.

Dorian said, measuredly, "Does that mean I can tell you what to do?"

"No!"

"Well then." Dorian turned up one hand. "Does it work both ways?"

Klaus tried to find the flaw in this argument, through the rush of anger and post-midnight exhaustion. He knew there was a flaw: he had merely protected the world from Dorian and he would have done the same thing regardless of who Dorian slept with. While he tried to find words, Dorian spoke again.

"I was out in Amsterdam and picked up… a man, it doesn’t matter who. And that was it: it didn’t matter. When I heard there was trouble here, nothing else mattered." He looked up again into Klaus’s eyes. "Even though I was angry with you, and I still am."

"And is that why you went off and screwed someone else?"

"Yes." Dorian’s defiance sounded a little too vehement to be real, but Dorian was always more vivid than reality.

"Does that make you _his_ lover?" asked Klaus, and now he did lean forward another few inches and grasped Dorian’s shoulders.

"No, he was just…" Dorian sat quietly under Klaus’s hands, allowing the painful grip. "By the time I got to Amsterdam, I just didn’t want to waste the trip."

Klaus said, feeling his assumptions about Eroica waver, "Is sex… are men… just a convenience to you, then? Nothing important?"

Dorian reached up to pluck Klaus’s hands from his shoulders. "Well, _you’re_ not a convenient man." His hands curled around Klaus’s, holding them.

"Oh? What am I, then?" returned Klaus, very conscious of Dorian’s body, of the hands touching his, the face below him.

Dorian surged up from the chair. There was, in truth, little to choose between their heights, and not much in their strengths. Dorian often let him forget it, but Klaus was reminded that his edge over Eroica was very narrow.

"I think you’re a bloody inconvenient man," said Dorian, openly angry now. "I think you’re too important to me, even when you make me mad." He might have meant "crazy" or "angry" or both. When Klaus backed up a step, Dorian closed the space between their bodies. "I’ve been enraging you for years and now you… now that you’re my lover…" He brushed against Klaus, not a heavy pressure but enough to make it clear that Dorian’s body was tall and lean and as male as Klaus was. "…you enrage me." He pushed Klaus one more step back, into a wall, and took one more step forward to press full against him. His body was warm and breathing, hard and aggressive, far too arousing for Klaus’s peace of mind. "Is turnabout fair play?"

Klaus discovered that one of his hands was cupping Dorian’s ass, grinding their crotches together. It all seemed unstoppable, but when Dorian tried to kiss him, Klaus wound his other hand into the mane of flowing curls and pulled Dorian’s head back, "Not yet," he hissed.

"Why not?" The lithe body against him revealed Dorian’s arousal also, as it rubbed lasciviously through the layers of fabric.

"I don’t want you…" Klaus stopped. It was more than obvious to both of them that he did want Dorian. Now.

"Oh, yes, you do." Both of them were glaring, still as much in anger as in lust, as Dorian’s arms slid around Klaus’s neck, clinging, and Dorian leaned in again to claim his mouth.

Klaus yanked at his handful of hair, ignoring the threat of Dorian’s free hands, which bypassed his throat and slithered up into his hair instead. "I don’t want you to distract me with your body. I may be… you may be my lover, but I won’t be one of your men."

The hands on Klaus’s scalp tightened for a moment, then relaxed. "You could be the only one. Is that what you want?"

Klaus looked at the blue eyes centimeters from his own, trying to read a trick. He pulled his hand out of Dorian’s hair, the other away from Dorian’s ass. The push at his groin eased but the heat there did not. Dorian stared back at him, unfathomable. "What do you mean?"

"In words I hope you understand, I mean that I don’t want to screw with anyone else," said Dorian. "Just don’t try to run my life."

Klaus let his hands hang in the air, trying to translate this into something that was insulting or hostile, anything but the declaration it seemed to be. But Dorian had said it, and in the silence that followed he did not retract it. His face was quite blank, as though he didn’t want to acknowledge what he’d said any more than Klaus did. Not yet.

Klaus took a breath and said, "‘Run your life.’ Is that, ‘Keep you from stealing’?" For an instant Dorian’s eyes flickered with relief, and then the anger was back. Klaus hoped his own relief did not show. "I can’t ignore my duty, for you. I couldn’t ignore it yesterday."

"Just don’t go so far out of your way to do your duty!"

"You were _in_ my way!"

They stared at each other, bodies still in contact, Dorian’s eyes hot on Klaus’s. "If it had been anyone else… doing your job here… He’d never have found me at the museum. It wouldn’t have been connected to the conference. It wouldn’t have been his duty."

"But it was me, and I know you, and I knew enough to look for you. Don’t expect me to ignore you, Dorian, when you bring yourself to my notice."

"Ahhh… Can you ignore this?" The hard body pressing against him was suddenly more erotic, more compelling, than ever. Dorian’s mouth came down on his, and Klaus did not resist it this time.

The wet, thrusting kiss absorbed him for a long moment, but Klaus broke from it eventually, twisting away from the blindingly seductive contact. "I can’t trust you, Eroica. I can’t trust anything you say."

Dorian had one hand in the small of his back; the other quested lower, squeezing lasciviously. "Can you trust how you feel? Can anyone else do this to you?"

"That’s not enough." Klaus took in a sharp breath. "I can’t trust you." He grasped Dorian’s wrists to pull the enticing hands away from his body.

"To do what?" asked Dorian, also breathing quickly, eyes very bright.

"You never do anything but what you want."

"It’s what you want." The shared heat of their erections, the renewed pressure of Dorian’s body, was harder to resist with every second.

"Want… yes." He tried to make himself stone-like, unresponsive. "But it isn’t my duty."

Dorian’s body eased back, but not far, the gleaming eyes steady on him. "You’re never going to give that up, are you? Not for anything I can do?"

The memory of Dorian’s touch, the hunger on Dorian’s face and the promise of his body all threatened to break Klaus’s resolve, but he said, holding to the frustration, "No!" In another few seconds the answer might have been different, but he glared at Dorian and managed to say nothing more.

Dorian nodded, once. "I believe you. You wouldn’t be the same without it, anyway." The slight motion as he breathed and spoke tore at Klaus’s senses, and then his body shuddered against Klaus’s. "So. I will not interfere with your duty." Dorian smiled like a devil. "If I know what it is, of course."

He looked sincere — as sincere as Dorian ever looked. Klaus did not think the words would stop Dorian from getting in his way if Dorian chose, but it was the best concession he could expect from Eroica. Klaus didn’t wait for more. "I shall hold you to that, Dorian." He was poised in agony, leaning toward the fire of Dorian’s presence.

Dorian’s wrists flexed in Klaus’s hands, moving sinew and muscle within his grip. "I warn you, if your duty wants to take you away just now, I’ll be forsworn in a hurry."

Klaus heard the words, but the fury of arousal roared in his ears and in his groin. He dropped Dorian’s wrists and caught at the hard, lithe body again, gasping once as it thrust against him.

Dorian was gasping also, kissing him quickly and pulling him away from the wall, over to the bed. "Come here, you insane bundle of wire ropes." He was tearing at Klaus’s clothes, taking no notice when Klaus tore at his in turn. The red outfit came off in pieces; Klaus had no idea if it was intended to or if he’d literally ripped it apart. Dorian didn’t seem to care.

Klaus didn’t notice where his clothes went, either; he only cared that they were off, out of his way. He pushed Dorian down, straddled him, felt Dorian’s hands playing with his erection. The blue eyes blazed up at him as he was squeezed and fondled. "Beautiful… Don’t wait, do me too. I want you on me… Now…"

Klaus moaned, but he found Dorian’s hard penis, shifted sideways to put it within easy reach, and gripped the rigid flesh with answering strokes as Dorian played him with lightning and fire. He saw Dorian’s face contort, felt the hips beneath him push upward, felt the quivering, insistent shaft in his hand shudder tightly and erupt, all while he groaned and gasped and rocked above Dorian, wanting more of the flickering heat of Dorian’s hands.

He heard Dorian’s voice crying out, but not the words. There might not have been words. Klaus groaned frustration, and groaned again at the renewed hard stroking that carried him to climax in a final hot rush. He burned with it, unaware of anything else, for an eternity.

Before his returning awareness waned into sleep, he heard Dorian say, "Lover… my lover. Stay…"

He was glad that he did not have to answer that, for he could not have resisted it.

* * * * *

Dorian woke him from an uncomfortable sleep, perhaps an hour later. Klaus was cold and stiff and still desperately sleepy, but he knew there was a reason — a good reason — to wake up. "What time is it?"

"Four am," said Dorian, who wore no timepiece nor, indeed, anything else. He was huddled next to Klaus as though he, too, were cold. Both of them needed a wash-up, if only to conceal the activities that Klaus did not want to advertise.

"I’ll bet anything you have to get up at some horrible hour to be on duty, and I’ll bet you know when those polite Spanish guards are going to check this floor, and your floor, and my floor. I had a time keeping out of their way earlier. _Are_ they Spanish?"

"Yes," said Klaus, forcing himself to keep his eyes open and noting that their garments were scattered in disarray from the far wall to the bed. Scraps of red silk tangled with his undershirt and uniform trousers. He sat up, stickily dislodging one leg from Dorian’s, and saw that his tunic, at least, had landed more or less neatly on a chair. "Have you something else to wear, something less obvious?"

"Only my cloak," said Dorian, sitting up in turn and wrapping his arms around his pulled-up legs. "You beautiful sharp dagger." Klaus ignored the nonsense words. "I rather enjoyed losing the rest."

Klaus, looking for his watch, picked up a draggled and ripped half of the thin scarlet shirt. He was utterly horrified — not at the shirt, which was only normal for Dorian, but at the testimony it bore to his own frenzy. "I’m sorry."

"I’m not."

Klaus gave him a hard look. "How are you going to get back to your suite without raising suspicion?"

"Very carefully," said Dorian. "Since I’ve been there all along, it wouldn’t do to be seen coming back in — from outdoors, of course, since I’m wearing the wrap." He glanced at his fur-trimmed red cape, hung in a corner. "How will you?"

Klaus looked at his watch. "Between 4.35 and 4.40, down the elevator and not the stairs. I suggest you do the same."

"My goodness. I’ll take it under consideration."

The flippant tone irritated Klaus, and he glanced up from collecting his clothes, but Dorian’s expression was merely thoughtful. "It’s a bit of a shock, Klaus, to see that you really know exactly what you’re doing."

Klaus supposed that amounted to an insult. "And do you?" He didn’t feel insulted. Not quite.

Dorian smiled. "Yes. But it’s good not to be alone."

* * * * *

Wednesday morning produced a second telephone message from the self-proclaimed Greens, repeating their demands almost word for word in the same bland English accent. It was forwarded to the new, temporary security offices through the telephone exchange that normally would have routed it to the NATO Headquarters building, and the frantic renewed search there took an hour to turn up a second "device," also primed and counting down to detonation.

It would have gone off at noon, and no one felt complacent at its discovery, which occurred at 11.23, or its disarming, at 11.39. Lieutenant Mermel observed, as if describing the weather, that even a witch’s cauldron would not have contained the explosion, and that he’d been within a broom sweep of following it to where her soul was. No one at the security team meeting early Wednesday afternoon cared to answer that.

"It could not have been planted there before we removed the first one, to wait like a devil’s—" Mermel stopped speaking at a look from Desti and resumed, in the same phlegmatic tone, "I assure you that exactly that spot was searched yesterday."

The discussion this time was attended by Desti, Major Eberbach, and their respective subordinates, and was conducted, by Desti’s choice, in French. Klaus noticed it only as a minor irritation. There were reports on the lab findings and research efforts, but eventually Klaus could not stop himself from asking, "What do the guards on the NATO building report?"

Desti shrugged, not happily. Eberbach knew better than to comment further. "I shall pursue that question," said Desti, "and promptly. Major, please do not trouble yourself with suspicions which are outside your concerns."

At this barb, the Major let the question drop. "Sir."

"One might ask, however, why those who threaten the conference would do so by placing a device in a building when those who place it must know that the building is empty," continued Desti.

"It may be that they don’t care," offered Mr. A. "If the group is sincere in its declaration of Green ideals, they might even have planned it so."

"It may also be that they don’t know where the conference is now," retorted the Major. Overall, it was to be hoped. "What or who could infiltrate a device into NATO’s building, yet would not know where the meetings have been moved?"

Desti gave him a sharp glance. "Anyone who had information of the building — as from a worker there — who is not of the security staff or who is not currently at the conference." Klaus perceived that he was being warned to leave all the delegates, however exotic and suspicious, diplomatically alone, and tried to suppress a prickle at the back of his neck. "It argues that the person who placed the device is merely an extremity of a more distant group."

The Major nodded, scowling. "The local police in several areas have already been asked to report to us any activities that may relate to this matter."

"Good. Please proceed. We don’t know how soon these madmen may set a third device upon us."

"Sir." At the Colonel’s nod, the Major jerked his head at Mr. A, saluted, and left the office.

Hours of eye-watering paperwork later, Klaus followed his latest cigarette with his fourth cup of coffee and recalled that he had had no breakfast and no lunch. The potential suspects were still too numerous to draw any conclusions, and all the time, while he scanned lists and tried to think, his ears were alert to hear a telephone: a call about another bomb, or perhaps a question about late-night activity on the top floor of the English delegates’ hotel…

He shook his head and looked around the room. He had a job to do. That had to take precedence.

At the Major’s growl of inquiry, Mr. B reported, from his own nest of papers, "The legitimate Green organization hasn’t done anything worth noting lately — hasn’t bought any of the parts used in the detonator, for instance, through any of its chapters."

"Of course they haven’t!" rasped Eberbach.

"But there’ve been thefts of this sort of equipment in Dortmund and Stuttgart. Ah, and in Antwerp, and one MI5 report that the Technical University at Manchester has bought some of the components pieces for research, and that inventory control is very lax there."

"Don’t be ridiculous."

"Yes, sir."

The Major groped for another cigarette, found the pack empty, and frowned at A. "Follow it up anyway. Isn’t there a—"

There was an English voice outside the open door. "…Didn’t you bring little G on this mission? I thought he always followed the Major everywhere."

Eroica. Klaus ground his teeth. And Eroica’s remark sounded so _normal_ , at least for Eroica, whose inexplicable soft spot for G was well known to the rest of the West German team. Klaus didn’t have time for Dorian’s antics, or concentration to spare to make sure his own actions were as usual in Eroica’s presence.

"Oh, Major, I hoped I’d find you down here somewhere," fluted the familiar voice, unfamiliarly clad in a double-breasted suit and a sober striped tie.

"Lord Gloria," he acknowledged the vision. Dorian’s curls flowed unrestrained down his back, but he carried a very proper British hat. "Aren’t you supposed to be with your Foreign Minister?"

"I’ve been good all day," proclaimed Dorian, "and believe me, he’s been watching like a hawk. I’m afraid Sir William wasn’t best pleased with my excursion."

"No wonder," said Klaus sourly, and shut his mouth sharply on a question as to which excursion — the one to Amsterdam or the unauthorized use of an anonymous hotel room last night — Dorian might mean. Was he here to deliver a serious warning? It would be like Dorian to mask it as a frivolous visit to annoy him. Dorian _was_ annoying him.

"He made more fuss about my crossing national borders than anything else," Dorian chattered on, folding his arms and leaning on a table edge, the picture of a fey, but innocent, victim of bureaucracy.

Mr. D, who had seen Eroica’s irregular entrance into Iran, his exit from Italy, and an eventful trip to the Soviet Union unblessed by official formalities at either end, coughed. Mr. B cleared his throat once, and subsided under the Major’s instant glare.

"Alaska," said the Major, to the room in general. Agents A, B, C and D turned white and were quite silent. The trio of Belgians at the table covered with police reports in Flemish and Dutch merely looked puzzled.

"Lord Gloria, I’m extremely busy on the very urgent business of this conference’s safety," said the Major. "Have you information about the bomb threats to the conference? No? Then might we continue this conversation later?"

"We might," said Dorian, unquelled. "Over dinner, perhaps?"

Klaus’s stomach, far too disciplined to rumble, shot him a silent reminder that it was empty.

"Not tonight," he said firmly.

"Oh, well, I must have a tête-à-tête with Perry before long. But I’ll see you again, never fear." He was gone in a waft of rose scent that would have been incongruous with the tailored wool suit, if anyone else were wearing it.

The Major growled, sent venomous looks to all the underlings in the room, and put down his copy of the lab chief’s report which said, essentially, that the second bomb, including its detonator, closely resembled the first. "B, I’m sure you know where the dining hall is in this house."

"Yes, sir," said B, blank-faced. "Ah, it’s on the ground floor just above the kitchens. Go up the wood-paneled staircase."

Klaus growled again and departed in search of a meal that was tasteless without Dorian’s company.

He stayed at the conference mansion until midnight, winnowing through the data and waiting, always listening, for the next telephone call that might spell doom: for this conference and its delegates and for the symbolic heart of NATO that stood northeast of Brussels and which today no longer held the assembly of 16 nations’ delegates and their busy gabble of proposal, counter-proposal, compromise and hopeful resolution.

No new messages arrived, and when he could no longer keep his eyes focused on the lines of print, he drove himself back to the hotel.

No one met him there, and in the few minutes before he fell profoundly asleep, Klaus wondered why that should seem strange.

* * * * *

A knock on his door woke him just before his internal clock would have done so. "Was ist’s?" he called. It was not one of his subordinates, or anyone from the conference security team; they would have rung first.

"Room service, sir." The voice was Eroica’s.

"Goddammit to hell," he snarled, knowing he must be audible to Eroica’s ears, and mindful that anyone in the corridor could thus hear raised voices in the rooms.

"Yes, sir. Please open the door."

Klaus shuffled out of bed and into a robe before unlocking the door. Dorian, dressed as a waiter and wearing a silly chef’s hat, pushed a laden cart into the room.

"What are you doing here?"

"Bringing you breakfast," said Dorian, taking off the hat, imperturbable. Yellow hair cascaded down his shoulders. "You’ll never eat it, otherwise."

That was true, but Klaus growled and stomped for the en suite bathroom.

Showered, shaved, dressed, and as civilized as he could bring himself to be under the circumstances, he found himself sharing exquisite rolls, and cheese and butter and jam and coffee, with Dorian.

"Why?" he asked, between gulps of steaming black coffee.

Dorian tilted a half-smile at him. "Why not?"

"Don’t be an idiot. Why are you here? Now?" It was beyond the realm even of Dorian’s most lunatic behavior that he might tackle Klaus into an early-morning session of sex. Or, Klaus amended to himself it was unlikely after the coffee had been poured and before it was consumed.

Dorian raised his eyebrows and rolled his eyes at the walls and ceiling. He shrugged. "I don’t know."

"Idiot," repeated Klaus, and shrugged back meaningfully. He’d been too preoccupied yesterday to de-bug the room, and unlikely as surveillance on the security teams was at the moment, implying possible listeners was the fastest way of dissuading Dorian. It was true that the Earl, peaceably sipping coffee, for once seemed content to confine his erotic suggestions to the unspoken.

"Oh, yes, your agents E and F were still awake earlier."

"So?" Klaus had left them cross-correlating reports of political dissidents with the potential suppliers of stolen electronic components.

"They’ve narrowed it down to some leads that sound good," said Dorian. "Your Mr. A is telephoning through the short list right now."

"Did you bring him breakfast, too?" asked the Major, acidly. Eroica had no right to run his team, or even oversee them.

"I didn’t have to. What happens when you decide you’ve found your, ah, ‘Greens’?"

"No one thinks they’re really the Green party."

"I use the label only in lieu of any other," said Dorian, spreading hands that held a butterknife and half a roll. "Having disarmed the bomb, are you going to leave the bombers to their local authorities?"

"Of course not," said the Major automatically, and then paused, muffin in mid-air. "Eroica!"

"Major."

"Goddammit, don’t you dare…"

"What, Major?" Butter might not have melted in Dorian’s mouth, but it would have sizzled at the look in his dancing eyes.

Klaus put down the muffin. "If we identify the person or persons who placed the devices in the NATO building, and if we decide to apprehend them ourselves instead of entrusting the matter to the police forces of whatever locality they inhabit — those police being already at the locale and being frequently very jealous about their rights of precedence — and if I and my agents are among the squad sent to bring them in, do not expect me to allow you to attach yourself to the operation." He smiled at Dorian and finished off his coffee.

"Oh, darling, do let me join the party!"

"You would also certainly have difficulty persuading Colonel Desti that you have any business interfering with security procedure. Again."

"But you need me!"

"Why?"

"Well…" Dorian batted his eyes. "I’m very good at that sort of thing."

"At getting in the way, you mean," said the Major.

"I’ve been practicing."

"You’ve been getting in the way more often."

"Oh, please… to make up for the Museum…" The words might have pleaded, but the tone was light, making it all a joke.

"I’m sure," said the Major repressively, "that Sir William has forbidden you to do anything of the sort." Dorian’s face brightened, but before he could speak, Klaus continued, "And I’m sure, if he hasn’t forbidden you in so many words, that it would be contrary to his wishes and to your obligations to him, if you were to come on any security-force expedition."

"Are you telling me what my duty is?"

"I’m telling you what _my_ duty is."

"Oh… I see." Dorian put down the cheese-laden knife. "You’re awfully difficult."

"Good."

"I’ll give you one more chance."

"No, Eroica. I’m telling you not to join my team or ‘help’ them on any security operations during this mission. Understood?"

"Oh, I understand you," said Dorian. "I’ll just have to… do my duty, Major, won’t I?" He poured the last of the coffee into Klaus’s cup. "Drink that. You may need it."

* * * * *

The only good news when the Major arrived at the conference mansion was that no new bomb threat had been received, nor had Lieutenant Mermel’s squad found any new devices to be described in terms of further obscenity.

Tension, nevertheless, was palpable in the security area and everyone scanned desperately through lists of names and numbers or stared at the stacks of paper, trying to extract by some formula the essential lines of information that would tell them who threatened the conference and where those people were now. Known cells of ill-inspired activists, with or without any hint of Green sentiments, could not be arrested for NATO’s convenience; those which had shown suspicious activity lately were being investigated by their various local authorities.

Klaus began to feel some sympathy for the organizers of centralized, totalitarian states. He knew better, but he hated waiting on outsiders whose methods he could not oversee.

The conference itself continued to meet, in what had been a ballroom and in the libraries, parlors, and drawing rooms of its temporary home. He heard voices occasionally from outside the security rooms: Spanish, Italian, English… Mr. C reported that the Northern-European delegates who were his liaison duty had caused no problems, and mentioned that the American party was secure if restive in the hands of Mr. Higgens and his company. He did not say anything about Eroica, although Klaus was nearly certain he’d heard that particular English voice more than once as agents hurried to their assignments and back.

The information that broke the case arrived, via telephone, some time after noon had come and gone without incident. Mr. A answered his line, nodded once, and waved urgently at the Major.

Klaus was at his side before he’d finished the gesture. "What is it?"

"The Antwerp burgomaster, sir. He confirms a deduction we made about one group in his jurisdiction. Will you and the Colonel speak to him?"

"Have Colonel Desti cut in on this line. Yes. Immediately." Klaus seized the handset and switched to English, too impatient to deal with the French-vs.-Flemish dichotomies of the Belgian power structure. "Sir? Major Klaus Heinz von dem Eberbach, NATO. Have you some information on the Trudi Noordsteen group, as my agent has reported?"

He heard Desti’s voice come on the line, in Flemish. "My friend Gerart, I know you have only half the manpower and twice the territory I command, but this time I depend on you."

Precedence thus established, Klaus listened. The Antwerp police knew of Noordsteen’s eco-activist group and suspected one of its members of industrial theft, yes, including explosives, yes, and it was confirmed that a recent contact, thought perhaps innocent at the time, perhaps not, had been an electronics engineer from Schoten, recently released from employment there…

It took another hour, but Desti eventually designated a squad, headed by Major Eberbach, to go to Antwerp and secure the terrorists from the Antwerp police or if necessary to aid the police in securing them from their residence in one of Antwerp’s outlying distracts. The NATO team was to offend the sensibilities of the Antwerp police as little as possible, but they were to retrieve the Noordsteen group for NATO investigation. The Burgomaster, after argument, agreed to this. After the past two days, Klaus didn’t care what compromises Desti made with due procedure; those were on Desti’s conscience, not his.

On the way out to the cars Klaus caught a glimpse of blond curls, and shot a glare at Mr. C. "Has Er— Lord Gloria asked anyone about this operation?"

C nodded, unsurprised. "Several times, sir."

Klaus wanted to scream. "And what was he told?" Aside from any other considerations, this mission carried a high risk of dangerous action. Dorian, a total incompetent with firearms, was best out of it.

"I told him that the investigation was proceeding, sir. That you were too busy to see him. He didn’t insist."

It sounded unlike Eroica not to insist, but as long as the thief didn’t know where they were headed, he couldn’t follow. Klaus hoped. "Good. Perhaps he will leave us alone for once."

* * * * *

The bright, brief December afternoon had not yet closed in when the NATO convoy turned off the motorway into urban Antwerp, and navigated confidently — Belgian members had been included in the squad — toward the complex of canals and rivers north of the Old City of Antwerp.

They found, not an orderly group of prisoners ready for pick up, but a very messy siege situation. The defenders had declared the existence of a third bomb and wouldn’t say where it was, offering to reveal it in return for amnesty. The police had spent the past hour in talking negotiations while, Klaus learned, the Brussels bomb squad searched in vain. It was almost certainly a bluff, everyone knew, but it was not a bluff they could ignore.

"Have this lot said anything definite about the new location of the NATO conference?" asked Klaus, finally, of the police lieutenant and a worried-looking burgomaster’s aide.

"I think not."

"If they can’t prove their threat has substance, I’m going in now, on my own judgement and authority. Colonel Desti will know what to do if I’m wrong."

"It would be… a relief, sir," said the worried aide. "His Excellency trusts the Colonel."

"Are there civilians in the area?" asked the Major. The drab quayside lane appeared to be deserted except for police.

"The houses — houseboats — in this row have all been evacuated," said the lieutenant. "What do you want my men here to do?"

Klaus assessed the cover and sight lines. "Keep them where they are until my team are in position. We’ll flank the target and go in through the boats on either side. When the fighting starts, cover the front here and be ready to come in as our second wave." The Antwerp siege squad carried arms. "Do they claim to have heavy weapons in there?"

"They’ve claimed anything you can name," said the lieutenant, shaking his head. "They have used only rifles, however, thus far."

"How foolish of them. I believe I shall enjoy the exercise," said the Major, and saw both men shake their heads; but they did not try to discourage him.

After a timetable and distraction had been agreed upon, getting into position required what seemed like far too many tense, quiet minutes of creeping over and through half the quay-length of houseboats. The crowded boats were not as stable as row houses. They wobbled and creaked underfoot, and only a very careful tread would not give away the agents' progress through them. By the third boat their advance was nearly silent, the motion subdued enough to be seen as random. Klaus hoped.

In one home less evacuated than it should have been, a graying head poked up from a nest of blankets, sneezed, and exclaimed a hoarse litany of curses at Mr. B and the Major. If that boat showed activity while they two moved quietly on… The Major hissed, "Out! Danger! Don't stay here!," in his sloppy Flemish, and gestured at the door they'd come in by, before he and B exited to the next boat in the row.

The profanity and aggrieved bobbing of the awakened houseboat faded behind them as they came closer to the Noordsteen boat, where the windows were shuttered but the interior buzzed with angry activity. Klaus checked his watch and saw Mr. B doing the same.

Two minutes to break-in time. Everything was quiet: the police were huddling and pretending to believe the Noordsteen bluffs, the far-side houseboat floated (wavering slightly) where A and the NATO Belgians would be in position by now, the twilit river behind the houses glimmered faintly.

One minute. Klaus could hear faint sounds of traffic in other streets, a distant powerboat on the water somewhere, even something that might be a church bell. Mr. B snorted once under his breath, but at the Major’s questioning glare he merely jerked his head back toward the irate houseboat sleeper. The Major gave a silent sigh and looked again at his watch.

Fifteen seconds. Ten. Five.

The far-side houseboat wavered again, and Klaus timed his step onto the target boat to match the other agents' move. Once on the outer deck he found an unlatched pair of window shutters and opened them cautiously, just enough to peer in, then eased open the windowpane. The three people in the room were gazing out the front, where the arrival of reinforcements was being staged at this moment for their ambushers’ benefit. Two of them held rifles, and the third, Klaus saw with alarm, carried a crate that was all too likely to contain combat grenades.

There were sharp noises above, as of a scuffle on the upper deck, and one of the three turned. Before he could react to the open window, Klaus dove through it and levelled his magnum at the man who had been speaking — the most likely leader. He knew that B was behind him, covering the second gunman. A and the Belgians must be above. Klaus said, "Stop right there and put down the weapons."

No one moved. The man Klaus was aiming at said, staring down the magnum’s barrel, "Trudi?" and the grizzled third man reached for one of his grenades.

"Don’t touch it, Trudi!" shouted Klaus, not moving his eyes. "Not enough room in here. It will blow you up too." He glared meaningfully at the brown-bearded man he faced. "And you."

Brown-beard started to say something, but just then three more bodies rocketed into the room through the back door, guns out and ready. A’s half of the attack team had arrived, one of them holding a fourth defender at gunpoint. That left the odds at four to three, and Brown-beard unfortunately had the wit to realize that it was his best chance. "Trudi, cover the door!" he screamed, and brought his rifle to bear on Klaus.

All hell broke loose.

Klaus had ducked behind a table before the first rifle-shot exploded, but it didn’t stop the two gunmen from trying again, or prevent A and B from contributing to the melee. The sudden plunge into combat was appalling: noise and stink of fearful bodies and hot metal, adrenaline and awareness of mortal danger. Klaus, crouching awkwardly behind a flimsy piece of furniture, knew he wore a wild grin.

Then a solid-seeming wall of sound burst over them, muffling even the gunshots. Klaus felt his eardrums loosen, and a hint of unsteadiness underfoot. "He’s broken the boat away!" cried the second gunman, in a thin squeak that should have been a shout. Klaus thought he must be correct. Trudi would have covered the quayside entrance with the closest weapon to hand.

It cut off their reinforcements from that direction. Klaus grinned wider. It was his license to defend his team, and himself, as he saw fit. He shot at Brown-beard, saw it knock the man down, and swiveled his aim to Trudi. Where was A? Brown-beard was out of it for now — any hit from the magnum would do that — but Trudi was the biggest danger.

Trudi was being grappled by A and… B. The other rifle let off a shot and Klaus turned to cover that man, full of fierce joy. "Drop it!" he yelled, hoping the man would not. The rifleman didn’t. In the room-sized space, the maneuvering had brought Klaus nearly too close for the rifle’s range, but not the magnum’s; he lunged toward the man, a tactic that should scare nearly any attacker into freezing for the crucial second that he needed.

There was an unaccountable report. Something tangled his legs, and Klaus hit the overturned table edge-on with his full weight. Another cracking noise sounded, loud even after the gunshots. Klaus fell, couldn’t stop himself from falling even though he should be able to.

His head hadn’t banged anything. His right knee hurt like hell and his magnum dropped and skittered away somewhere. His right hand was… perfectly fine, but shaking. The room was shaking and roaring. Was the damned houseboat foundering, was it going to sink?

More shots sounded, and more roaring from the far side of the room, and then relative silence, instantly filled by screaming and shouting. Klaus groped after his gun, and found that his hand was wet; the floor was wet. Was the boat flooding already? Everything was still shaking.

Something seized his hand: another hand, long-boned and smeared with blood. It lifted him, and when Klaus’s eyes focused, the one steady object in his vision was Dorian’s face. It was perfectly intent and dead white. "Major, you’re bleeding," he said, the words slow to Klaus’s ears. He pushed Klaus down onto the floor and gripped, painfully hard, at his inner thigh.

"Eroica…" he shouted, hearing a croak. Whatever Dorian had in mind, this was not the time or the place.

"Don’t fight me, Major," said a tight, British voice. "For your life, don’t fight me now. Do it later." Dorian had never sounded like that in all of Klaus’s memory. It was the opposite of a bedroom manner.

Someone else gave an odd exclamation, wordless, and Dorian’s hands closed around his thigh again. There was more blood on everything, including Dorian, whose hands pressed over his groin… not quite…

It hurt. Dorian was pinching him, hard, swearing in a way that had nothing to do with lovemaking. More red sprayed everywhere, and Dorian gasped and pinched again, hard. It hurt so much that Klaus stopped noticing his knee. He opened his mouth to protest, but it didn’t seem to be working either. "Ah… hh…" he heard himself say, and even that sounded weak. "Sa… ha…"

"Quiet, Major," said Dorian, sounding perfectly serious, and then softly "Oh, my God." Then he looked up and nodded at someone else. "Is the rest of it over? Anyone else of ours hurt?"

I’m not hurt, thought Klaus, annoyed. A crack on the knee and a cut somewhere… Nothing much.

Dorian’s voice came from far away, shaking with the wavering, drifting houseboat. "Here, B, help me with him. I daren’t let this go."

Klaus’s vision went from red to gray to black. His leg hurt. Not his right knee, his left leg. His last awareness was of unbelievable pain radiating from Dorian’s fingers pinching near his groin.

It didn’t seem like sex at all.

* * * * *

Dorian, carrying the mercifully unconscious Major with B’s help, crossed the houseboat’s length and accomplished the tricky maneuver of handing Klaus out the back window into a small speedboat. Klaus would have raised a fuss about his hot-wiring the boat, but Dorian was glad he’d done it. He was glad he’d learned trauma first-aid after the time Jeff was hurt on a caper, and he was glad he’d forced Mr. F on fallacious pretenses to explain the Major’s sudden expedition. The Major adored these grandstand shooting parties, but Dorian had no illusions that Iron Klaus was indestructible.

Dorian hoped it would pay off this time. Klaus was alive when they reached the nearest intact dock, where Mr. C waited, wide-eyed, for Bonham to jockey the choppy little boat to a smooth halt. When Eroica and his men had first arrived, C had given them a look Dorian preferred not to interpret; he took that kind of disapproval from Klaus, not from anyone else. Nevertheless, when the firefight broke out C had asked no more questions, and now he waved them toward the dark car behind him. At the sight of the Major’s limp body, he asked, "Is he…"

"I think his leg’s broken," said B.

"The bastard got his artery," said Dorian, too angry to be frightened. "How close is a hospital?"

C nodded once and swallowed. "Into the car. It’s about a kilometer to St. Joseph’s." He had the driver’s door open as he spoke, and the motor was running before Dorian and B had Klaus in the car. "Can you hold on that long?"

"He’s out," said Dorian, and clarified, "he’ll stay still."

"Good," said C. He sounded like the Major.

Dorian crouched beside the seat, holding the slippery, twitching blood vessel hard against the mass of muscle. Once he thought the artery had slipped from his fingers and his heart went cold before he realized that there was no more leakage than before, and that the Major’s pulse still beat in his throat. Weakly. They were both drenched with reeking, fresh, arterial blood.

Dorian, who had no belief in any god whatsoever, prayed.

After the longest kilometer of his life, the car finally pulled to the curb. C jumped out and shouted in panicked German before the motor died.

No, Dorian realized, it was Dutch… Flemish. No matter. Two white figures boiled out of a swing door and ran to the car. Dorian had just enough presence of mind to gasp, "Here! Open the door!" without letting his hands relax.

The backseat door opened, and two faces blinked at him, at B, at the blood, and finally at the recumbent Major. "Not me," Dorian gasped. "Him! Broken leg. Artery bleeding!" He remembered, as if for his own life, not to let go.

One face snapped something in German — in Flemish — at the other, who departed, still at a run. "Where is light?" asked the sharp tenor voice in English.

The car’s dome light had been switched off for the twilight houseboat job, naturally. He hadn’t even noticed before. "Car light," grunted Dorian. B’s arm reached up from the passenger seat, fumbled for a long moment and found the right switch. The interior sprang into dim, red light.

It was white on the orderly’s suit and face, whiter as the young man took in the blood-soaked pair of them. "Stretcher will come," he squeaked.

Klaus was still alive.

A moment later the stretcher and two orderlies — or nurses, or whatever they were — arrived. Dorian hung onto his lover’s lifeblood until he was quite sure the woman with the tourniquet understood him, and only let go when she told him a second time to get his hands out of her way.

She finished her job and nodded, momentarily satisfied. Klaus was still alive, Dorian surmised, prevented now from touching him, as he stumbled after the stretcher toward the emergency room entrance.

C was already there, and his eyes told Dorian something was wrong. Dorian ignored everything but Klaus until a disgruntled, green-capped person of indeterminate gender pulled him out of the room where Klaus was. "Your friend is being prepared for surgery," he — no, she — said, briskly impersonal. "He is alive. I hope to keep him alive if you do not delay me any longer. Wait in the waiting area. That is best."

She meant business; Dorian recognized the tone of a professional interrupted at work. If she meant business about Klaus, he wasn’t going to argue. "Yes, doctor." He retreated to join Mr. C and a damp, nervous-looking Mr. B.

"There’s a loo down that way," said B.

The comment seemed irrelevant to Dorian. "Thank you." He saw chairs, but it didn’t occur to him to sit down.

C glanced at him again, still looking shocked. "Er— Ah…"

"What!?"

"What did you say your name was?"

His life until now had been a silly round of disguises and fakery. "Gloria," said Dorian, sickened, at this moment, by his own deceptions. "Dorian Red Gloria. Don’t laugh, it’s my parents’ fault."

No one at NATO had ever laughed at his name.

"Lord Gloria, perhaps you should wash," said C. "You’re all over blood."

"Oh." He was right. Dorian looked vaguely at his red-caked hands, and realized that his hair was soggy. "Is there a—"

"Down that way," said B, pointing.

"Oh. I see." Dorian went.

When he came back, feeling unkempt but smelling only marginally of blood… he didn’t want to lose the last traces of the Major’s blood, not if it was going to be the last… he found C alone in the waiting room. He still couldn’t sit, but he could pace. "Where’s B?" he asked, eventually.

"I sent him back to the others. They’ll need to know where we are. There hasn’t been any news from in here." He nodded toward the inner doors.

Dorian, now that he was able to think, remembered a salient fact about hospitals. "Wasn’t there admitting paperwork or something?"

"I handled it," said C. "We’ve got a regular form for it."

"Oh… How did you know where this was?"

C shrugged. "I always check where the nearest hospital is when we’re on a raid like this. It’s just good sense."

"Thank god," said Dorian, devoutly, "for German efficiency."

"It’s common sense," insisted C, with more emotion than Klaus’s underlings usually showed. "Don’t throw ‘efficiency’ at me like that. _He’s_ ‘efficient.’ Do you like it?"

"Not always," said Dorian. "It was the fastest broken leg I ever saw."

"I didn’t see it happen. How many legs have you seen broken?"

"One too many. I don’t think he realized it. D’you think that doctor will get to tell him?"

"Better him than me," said C earnestly.

"Her… I think," said Dorian. "Do you like him?"

"Like?" C looked nonplussed.

"The Major."

"I don’t know. One doesn’t like one’s superiors." He shook off the questions, Major-like, with a countering question. "How did you come to be following us with your, um, squad?"

"Ung," said Dorian. "It seemed like a good idea at the time. Ah… Didn’t you think so?"

"You saved the mission," said C, solemnly. "Maybe his life, too."

"That was the idea."

C nodded, eyes thoughtful, and they sat in silence for a long time.

Dorian brooded, unable to think of anything but Klaus. As long as there was no news, he could assume Klaus was alive. If he’d come in earlier, Klaus might not be hurt. If he hadn’t distracted the Major so much during the conference, Klaus might not have been hurt…

He recognized unproductive logic after a while. If he’d done anything differently, Klaus might not have been hurt, or he might just as well have been killed instead. Might-have-beens answered no questions in the real world. He loved Klaus, and he was very afraid the feeling was going to be inconvenient this time.

It couldn’t be helped. He did love Klaus.

* * * * *

Klaus was still alive on Friday morning. Dorian cornered Mr. A before the conference’s closing assembly, and had time for just that much information before Reggie Marsh, a tenacious watchdog, found him and dragged him upstairs to the ballroom. Dorian went through the final hours of his official responsibilities under Sir William’s stern eye, behaving with perfect, even subdued, propriety.

Perry would probably never speak to him again. Perry had been the one to bring him to Sir William’s attention, and Dorian could see that Sir William remembered it, and that Perry knew he did. He felt like a bad-luck charm.

As he listened to the U.S. Secretary make an interminably stultifying speech, Dorian thought about his life: Klaus didn’t trust him. James already knew better than to trust him, but it didn’t seem to help James. Perry no longer trusted him, for excellent reasons. And he didn’t even have _The Hunt of Atalanta_ to show for it.

Klaus was alive.

Lord Gloria shook innumerable hands, bid adieux and addios but not one au revoir. It was all a polite show. Alone with the British minister afterward, he apologized, at length, as gracefully and sincerely as he could, for the difficulties his irresponsible behavior had caused. It was a performance, and the experienced old diplomat’s eyes told Dorian that he knew it was a performance, but it was the only action Sir William might possibly understand.

Dorian even meant it, most of it. But he didn’t regret any of the actions that meant that Klaus was still alive.

* * * * *

Klaus knew he was alive. It was painfully obvious. Now that he was no longer allowed to sleep in drug-hazed darkness, Klaus was intensely uncomfortable and quite helpless. Much of his lower body was immobilized and all of it hurt. He had been assured that he would heal, if he obeyed orders; but he knew he wasn’t going to enjoy it.

Mr. A had brought reports. It was galling in the extreme that Eroica’s unauthorized addition to the raid had saved it from total disaster, as well as saving the Major from a quick, undignified death. It was some little consolation that A, who had seen Eroica’s miscellaneous pranks on the unwilling Major in previous operations, did not see any of it as odder than usual.

"How did Eroica find us?" asked the Major, when A stood up to leave, looking a little too nonchalant.

"I can’t say, sir," said the agent. Then, hastily: "But perhaps you could ask him. He’s waiting to see you."

"Here!? Now!?" He could just lift his head, and the shockwave of pain it caused didn’t matter.

"Yes, sir. He insisted on coming to the hospital with me."

"Why did you let him!? You know better than—" It seemed that his shout still worked: A wasn’t nonchalant any more.

Eroica’s warm, careless, English voice interrupted him, followed by Eroica’s entrance into the room. "Whatever are you browbeating this poor man for, Major? Is it over me? He brought me here because he knew I’d get in to see you, whatever he did." English eyebrows lifted, and a vague gesture shooed A out the door. "Wouldn’t I?"

Even flat on his back Klaus disliked conceding anything, but he let the agent leave unchallenged. Why should he expect A to resist Eroica when nothing and no one else could?

"You know I would have," continued Dorian, producing a vase full of hothouse ferns, pink lilies and long-stemmed red roses. Klaus winced with as little motion as possible.

"Regards of the season," said Dorian. "Many happy returns."

Klaus wasn’t sure he was ready for Dorian in full frivol. "I trust not."

"How do you feel?"

"Horrible."

Dorian smiled at him, not frivolously. "I’m glad you’re back to normal. Did Mr. A or anyone tell you that the conference is safely finished? Your mission was a great success."

If Eroica expected to be thanked, he might deserve it but Klaus couldn’t bring out the words. "Why did you follow us? And how did you learn where we were going?"

Dorian tried to wave it off, but after a moment of the best glare Klaus could muster, he sat down in the chair Mr. A had vacated and returned a steady gaze. "I won’t tell you. I might want to do it again, you see."

"Eroica, whatever you’ve done—"

Screaming erupted in the corridor beyond the closed, but not soundproofed, door. There were several voices, some of them suspiciously familiar. "Where is he — I know you know!" screeched James’s least bearable tone, while someone who was probably Mr. A protested and someone who might be Bonham added an ineffectual baritone note to the confusion. Dorian, listening, smiled.

"He’s been following you because you’re with the Iron Major! It’s bad enough that he wants him, the idiot, hot-pants, insane—"

Several other voices intervened, loudly. The din reversed direction and faded down the corridor, and Klaus saw Dorian, unmoved by his underling’s insults, nod in satisfaction. "I thought A would try to get him out of the way," he said. "We’ll have a few minutes."

Klaus blinked once as he assimilated the stratagem. Before he could say anything, Dorian asked, "Are you angry at me? For saving your life?"

Klaus stared at the ceiling, feeling out of charity with the universe for a number of reasons; but he could not be more annoyed with Dorian than with the rest of the world. "I should be. You disobeyed me."

"Ah, but I never agreed not to."

"You abandoned your duty. You’ve been useless to your own people and somehow you’ve suborned mine. Did you tell A to get James out of the way?"

"I’d never be able to interfere with your men, Major. They’re far too loyal. And Sir William has already been most explicit on the subject of my irresponsibility." The sudden, subdued droop to the expressive mouth might have been genuine.

"He has a right to. What justification do you have for playing around in my mission?"

"I didn’t keep you away from your duty," said Dorian.

Klaus closed his eyes, which would not get rid of Dorian and which only reminded him that ignoring the rest of the world left him alone in a painfully unmanageable body.

"Did I?" pursued Dorian, inexorable as ever. "You’ll be able to do that duty of yours in the future because I dealt myself into your mission."

It was true.

"I did it to keep you alive. I’m glad I succeeded. Does being alive count for anything?"

Klaus opened his eyes, and listened to the corridor beyond the door. Still all quiet. Looking at Dorian, he said, "It— It does." His duties, to himself and his family as well as the military, included staying alive when possible.

His duties could be said to include staying out of Dorian's bed. At the times when he followed Dorian in acting on his desire, he didn’t understand himself. There was no reason for it, beyond desire. Keeping his voice low he said, "Dorian. It turned out well, this time—"

" _‘Well’_ !?"

"—but you’re unpredictable. Your success…"

"Is success," said Dorian, sitting back, serene. "Have I ever failed to get what I wanted?"

"Once," said Klaus, and to the comically displeased expression that appeared on Dorian’s face, added, "Monday night at the museum."

"Oh. That was your fault. Don’t hold that one against me."

"I didn’t mean to," said Klaus, still low-voiced. "I know you’re a thief."

"Though I don’t think I’d mind if you carried me away somewhere…" suggested Dorian, golden eyelashes flicking sideways in a parody of seduction.

Klaus made himself relax and look at the ceiling, then turned back to Dorian and his eyelashes. He wasn’t enough out of his mind with pain or with painkillers to take refuge in the floating haze that would hide everything but the truth of himself and Dorian. He was alive, and that was good, but he didn’t understand the first thing about Dorian and never had.

"When you came back… from Amsterdam, why did we…"

The question surprised Dorian into seriousness. "Why did we fight, or why did we make love?" he asked softly.

The words were still shocking, but Klaus managed to ignore that. "Yes."

Dorian shrugged. "Because you’re a pig-headed martinet and I love you. Because you’re so fucking hot when you’re angry. Because you wanted it so much. Didn’t you?"

Klaus nodded with reluctant truth. "You said… you didn’t want anyone else."

"Oh." Dorian looked graceful even when he was disconcerted. "I hoped you wouldn’t notice that."

"Why did you say it?"

The elegant shoulders shrugged, with far too much composure. "I expect I meant it. I wasn’t thinking much. You made me so angry…" He looked at Klaus directly. "What do you think?"

"I?" Klaus returned Dorian’s gaze for a painful moment before he let his head fall back on the pillow. Lovely blank ceiling replaced the face of his troublesome lover. "I… Dorian I don’t know what I am. With you, without you… I don’t know."

"Are you sorry?" asked Dorian, touching Klaus’s lax hand where it rested on the tucked-in coverlet. The warmth of the contact was unexpected, but welcome; Klaus felt his fingers curl toward Dorian’s almost without volition.

"Constantly," said Klaus solemnly, clutching Dorian’s hand.

"I’m not," said Dorian softly. "Maybe I don’t know everything either, but I like being with you. You’re so terribly exciting."

Klaus stared at the ceiling, not releasing Dorian’s hand. "Is that all you care about? Excitement?"

"So do you," said Dorian. "I follow you because you get me into the most exciting places I’ve ever been."

An ache in his immobilized body threatened to become a pain. Klaus said, "Do you think I do it for that reason?"

"Well," said Dorian, "I think you like hunting things down and catching them. I know you like shooting at things."

"I…" The hip and leg were definitely becoming far too noticeable. "That’s not why I do it."

"Not entirely," said Dorian, voice sober.

"I am not," Klaus pointed out, "very exciting just now."

"That’s what you think." Dorian squeezed his hand. "Klaus, darling, I’ll come back and see you again later." The suggestion in his voice was unmistakable, even to Klaus, as he laid Klaus’s hand back on the bed, stroking the wrist before he let it go. "I suspect our time’s running short at the moment. Just remember that I’m a very good thief: I can get in anywhere I want." He stood up so that Klaus could see him, winked lasciviously and whispered, "Anywhere."

A rustle of feet and returning voices, including Bonham but minus James, announced the end of their privacy. Dorian grinned, and proclaimed, "I was mad, I tell you, utterly mad!" in a parody of Eroica’s flamboyance.

"You’re an idiot," said the Major, trying to ignore the discomfort of his shattered bones healing in the correct position. It was threatening now to overwhelm him even with his eyes open.

"Are you hurting?" asked Dorian, percipient as always.

"No," lied Klaus.

"Of course not. I’ll ask the sister to give you something, then, shall I?" Before he opened the door to the outer world, he smiled at Klaus privately, not Eroica’s extrovert leer. "Auf Wiedersehen, Major." He fluttered a long-fingered hand and left the door open behind himself.

* * * END * * *


End file.
